  We propose and analyze a new scheme to produce ultracold neutral plasmas deep
in the strongly coupled regime. The method exploits the interaction blockade
between cold atoms excited to high-lying Rydberg states and therefore does not
require substantial extensions of current ultracold plasma experiments.
Extensive simulations reveal a universal behavior of the resulting Coulomb
coupling parameter, providing a direct connection between the physics of
strongly correlated Rydberg gases and ultracold plasmas. The approach is shown
to reduce currently accessible temperatures by more than an order of magnitude,
which opens up a new regime for ultracold plasma research and cold ion-beam
applications with readily available experimental techniques.
