[en] Experiments are under way at Sandia Laboratories in which spherical CD₂ and LiD pellets are being irradiated in a tetrahedral geometry with four beams of up to 50 J/beam from a Nd:glass laser. Pellets ranging in diameter from 50-200 μm have been irradiated with pulses of width 0.97 ns. Of the laser output energy,approximately35-40% is absorbed by the target. Most of this energy manifests itself in kinetic energy of the ions. X-ray spectra show simple bremsstrahlung-recombination distributions which indicate electron temperatures in the few hundred eV range. No target neutrons have been observed. CD₂ targets also have been irradiated in a background deuterium gas ranging in pressure from 0.1 to 10 Torr. Neutrons are observed coming from the gas. (author)