Photoacoustic spectroscopy was used to measure the pulse duration dependence of the XeCl laser ablation of polyimide, polyethylene terephthalate, and post‐mortem human aorta. It was observed that the ablation threshold exhibited only a weak dependence on pulse duration. Photoablation etch depth measurements of polyimide as a function of XeCl laser fluence indicated that over a practical etch depth range of 0.1 to 1 &mgr;m per laser pulse the etch depth was independent of the pulse duration.