Highly charged ions are extracted from an electron beam ion trap and guided to Retrap, a cryogenic Penning trap, where they are merged with laser cooled Be+ ions. The Be+ ions act as a coolant for the hot highly charged ions and their temperature is dropped by about 8 orders of magnitude in a few seconds. Such cold highly charged ions form a strongly coupled nonneutral plasma exhibiting, under such conditions, the aggregation of clusters and crystals. Given the right mixture, these plasmas can be studied as analogues of high density plasmas like white dwarf interiors, and potentially can lead to the development of cold highly charged ion beams for applications in nanotechnology. Due to the virtually non existent Doppler broadening, spectroscopy on highly charged ions can be performed to an unprecedented precision. The density and the temperature of the Be+ plasma were measured and highly charged ions were sympathetically cooled to similar temperatures. Molecular dynamics simulations confirmed the shape, temperature and density of the highly charged ions. Ordered structures were observed in the simulations.
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