Extreme events in time-delayed nonlinear optics.

We report experimentally on extreme events in the pulsating dynamics of an optical time-delayed system, i.e., a diode laser subject to a phase-conjugate feedback. We study the effect of the feedback strength on extreme events' properties. We show a transition to non-Gaussian statistics of the pulse intensity and an increased number of extreme events as the mirror reflectivity increases. The extreme event pulse is anticipated and followed by smaller pulses with time-delay periodicity.