[en] Conditions have been studied under which a polychromatic optical superlattice can form and trap the Coulomb cluster of two strongly interacting ions. In our previous work (Krasnov I V and Kamenshchikov L P 2014 Opt. Comm. 312 192) this new all-optical method of obtaining and confining the Coulomb clusters was demonstrated by numerical simulations for special values of the optical superlattice parameters and in the case of Yb ions. In the present paper the conditions are explicitly formulated, under which the long-lived two-ion cluster in the superlattice cell is formed. The peculiarity of these conditions is the renormalization of the ion–ion Coulomb interaction. Notably, the renormalized Coulomb force is determined by the effective charge which depends on the light field parameters and can strongly differ from the “bare” ion charge. This result can be accounted for by the combined manifestation of the quantum fluctuations of optical forces, nonlinear dependence of these forces on the velocity, and non-Maxwellian (Tsallis type) velocity distribution of the ions in the optical superlattice. Explicit analytical formulas are also obtained for the parameters of the optical two-ion cluster. (paper)