The vaporization of a spherically symmetric liquid droplet subject to a high‐intensity laser flux is investigated on the basis of a hydrodynamic description of the system composed of the vapor and ambient gas. In the limit of the convective vaporization, the boundary conditions at the fluid–gas interface are formulated by using the notion of a Knudsen layer in which translational equilibrium is established. This leads to approximate jump conditions at the interface. For homogeneous energy deposition, the hydrodynamic equations are solved numerically with the aid of the CON1D computer code (‘‘CON1D: A computer program for calculating spherically symmetric droplet combustion,’’ Los Alamos National Laboratory Report No. LA‐10269‐MS, December, 1984), based on the implict continuous–fluid Eulerian (ICE) [J. Comput. Phys.8, 197 (1971)] and arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) [J. Comput. Phys.14, 1227 (1974)] numerical mehtods. The solutions exhibit the existence of two shock waves propagating in opposite directions with respect to the contact discontinuity surface that separates the ambient gas and vapor.