Continuous-wave mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser focusable to 5 × 10^13??W/cm^2

Generation of sub-10-fs pulses with an average power of 1 W and a peak of 1.5 MW from a Kerr-lens mode-locked mirror-dispersion-controlled Ti:sapphire laser is demonstrated. A specially designed lens triplet focuses the output of this compact all-solid-state source to a peak intensity in excess of $5\times {10}^{13} \mathrm{W}/{\mathrm{cm}}^2$. Nonperturbative nonlinear optics is now becoming feasible by use of the output of a cw mode-locked laser.