The recent observations of gravitational waves from compact binaries are based on cavity-enhanced Michelson interferometers. High continuous-wave laser power is desired inside the interferometer to mitigate the impact of shot noise arising from the quantum nature of light. In light-shining-through-a-wall experiments searching for the axion particle and its kind, high photon flux is desired to boost the event rate. In this talk, we will describe the gravitational wave detectors using Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo as active examples; we will also illustrate the light-shining-through-a-wall experiment in conjunction with the ongoing Any Light Particle Search (ALPS) hosted at DESY Hamburg. We will draw attention to the high-power near-infrared continuous-wave lasers in these fundamental physics experiments, and give future prospects on these experiments and their laser sources.