Pulses of 780 nm light of duration 170 fs and power densities up to 3.8ϫ10 13 W cm Ϫ2 are used to study the photoionization/dissociation processes in the series of gas phase, cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons including benzene, naphthalene, phenanthrene, and anthracene. The near-infrared ionization process leads to the production of intact molecular ions for all of the molecules studied. Measurements of the ion intensity as a function of laser fluence revealed the order of the ultrafast ionization process to be 8.0Ϯ0.1 for anthracene, 6.9Ϯ0.1 for phenanthrene, 8.5Ϯ0.1 for naphthalene, and 8.1Ϯ0.1 for benzene. The relative femtosecond photoionization cross section decreased from 1.0 for anthracene to 0.2 for phenanthrene to 0.1 for naphthalene to ϳ0.005 for benzene. The relative order and cross section of the femtosecond ionization processes suggest that a field ionization mechanism is operative.