Parylene (C8H8) and tungsten‐glass (W2O/P2O5) disks have been irradiated with 150–400 psec Nd:YAG‐glass laser pulses focused to diameters of 250–300 &mgr;m with flux levels in the 1013–1015W/cm2range. An extensive array of diagnostics was used to measure the temporal and energy distributions of the focused laser light at the target, the angular distribution of the scattered laser light, the x‐ray spatial and spectral emission characteristics, and the emitted ion and electron distributions. Analysis of the experimental results indicates that the laser‐plasma interaction was characterized by a variety of collective phenomena which appeared stronger in the tungsten‐glass experiments.