  We consider a lattice of coupled circle maps, a model arising naturally in
descriptions of solid state phenomena such as Josephson junction arrays. We
find that the onset of spatiotemporal intermittency (STI) in this system is
analogous to directed percolation (DP), with the transition being to an unique
absorbing state for low nonlinearities, and to weakly chaotic absorbing states
for high nonlinearities. We find that the complete set of static exponents and
spreading exponents at all critical points match those of DP very convincingly.
Further, hyperscaling relations are fulfilled, leading to independent controls
and consistency checks of the values of all the critical exponents. These
results lend strong support to the conjecture that the onset of STI in
deterministic models belongs to the DP universality class.
