Thermal wakefield oscillations of laser-induced plasma channels and their spectral signatures in luminescence

Starting from a general microscopic model for an interacting two-component plasma including the interaction with a quantized light field, the equations of motion in the Wigner representation are derived. In contrast to the case of strongly focused laser beams which are known to leave behind so called wakefield oscillations of the electron plasma, thermal wakefield oscillations dominate the dynamics of a femtosecond laser generated plasma rod. It is shown that the photoluminescence from the resulting electron-ion plasma bears spectral features related to the plasma frequency due to these thermal radial wakefield oscillations.