Excitable pulses and diffusion of localized states in a driven semiconductor laser with delay

Semiconductor lasers with optical injection may be brought to an “excitable” regime, in which they respond to external perturbations in a neuron-like way. When submitted to delayed optical feedback this system can host stable optical localized states. We characterize experimentally the excitable response of a semiconductor laser with optical injection to external perturbations for different parameter values and show that localized states may diffuse in presence of noise.