Episodic synchronization via dynamic injection.
We report the occurrence of spontaneous synchronizing events between two semiconductor lasers, when the emission of a frequency- and intensity-chaotic driving laser is unidirectionally coupled into a second stable response laser. The driving laser is driven chaotic by delayed optical feedback, the response laser is a device-identical solitary laser. We demonstrate the onset of an episodic synchronization regime when the two lasers are spectrally detuned with respect to each other. By a joint experimental and modeling analysis we can attribute the onset and the duration of the episodes to properties of spectral overlap of both lasers. This effect can even give rise to seemingly anticorrelated intensity behavior. We expect episodic synchronization to be a generic scenario for the loss of synchronization of chaotic oscillators exhibiting frequency cycles.