Predictability and control of extreme events in semiconductor lasers and coupled electronic circuits

Potentially destructive extreme events are characteristic of the thick tail of
"L-shaped" probability distributions. They have been reported in different fields
such as in oceanography, where rogue waves (RWs) can be observed in
relatively calm deep ocean waters, or in optics as large intensity pulses. Recently, we
have unveiled the mechanism involved in the occurrence of deterministic optical RWs
in a commercial semiconductor laser under cw optical injection and showed that
they can be predicted some time in advance. Consistent results are obtained in
a semiconductor laser subject to an external optical feedback in the short
cavity regime, suggesting a generic mechanism involved in the occurrence of these
extreme events. We also demonstrate anticipated synchronization as a plausible
method to predict extreme desynchronization events in a system of two electronic
oscillators coupled in a master-slave configuration. We use this to efficiently
suppress the extreme events by applying a direct corrective reset to the
slave oscillator.