Sympathetic crystallization of trapped ions

We have created multispecies Coulomb crystals in a linear Paul trap contain ing up to a few hundred ions of which more than 50% were cooled only sympat hetically through the Coulomb interaction with laser-cooled Mg+ ions. In an extreme case, one laser-cooled ion maintained order in a 15 ion string. Io n species segregation was obtained by radiation pressure. Previous experime nts and molecular dynamics simulations suggest the temperature is 10 mK or lower. These results indicate that a wide range of atomic and molecular ion s can be cooled and localized in linear Paul traps which is important for i mprovements in spectroscopic studies of such ions.