title: Directed percolation criticality in turbulent liquid crystals.
abstract: We experimentally investigate the critical behavior of a phase transition between two topologically different turbulent states of electrohydrodynamic convection in nematic liquid crystals. The statistical properties of the observed spatiotemporal intermittency regimes are carefully determined, yielding a complete set of static critical exponents in full agreement with those defining the directed percolation class in 2+1 dimensions. This constitutes the first clear and comprehensive experimental evidence of an absorbing phase transition in this prominent nonequilibrium universality class.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan. kazumasa@daisy.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
authors.forename: Kazumasa A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Takeuchi
authors.forename: Masafumi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kuroda
authors.forename: Hugues
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chaté
authors.forename: Masaki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sano