While ion heating by elastic electron-ion collisions may be neglected for a
description of the evolution of freely expanding ultracold neutral plasmas, the
situation is different in scenarios where the ions are laser-cooled during the
system evolution. We show that electron-ion collisions in laser-cooled plasmas
influence the ionic temperature, decreasing the degree of correlation
obtainable in such systems. However, taking into account the collisions
increases the ion temperature much less than what would be estimated based on
static plasma clouds neglecting the plasma expansion. The latter leads to both
adiabatic cooling of the ions as well as, more importantly, a rapid decrease of
the collisional heating rate
