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Updated: Feb 1, 2026

Using Optical Tweezers for the Generation of Hybrid Spheroids
Published on: May 30, 2025
Optical Tweezer-Controlled Entanglement Gates with Trapped-Ion Qubits
David Schwerdt1,2, Lee Peleg1,2, Gal Dekel1
1Weizmann Institute of Science, Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
Abstract:
We propose an entanglement protocol where ions illuminated by optical tweezers serve as control qubits. We experimentally demonstrate this proposal with a controlled Mölmer-Sörensen operation on a three-ion chain, analogous to the canonical Toffoli gate. Our demonstration features cases in which the control qubit was in one of its logical basis states, and not in their superposition, due to dephasing by tweezer beam intensity fluctuations. Finally, we discuss how our protocol generalizes to a broad class of unitary operations and larger qubit systems, enabling a single-pulse implementation of n-controlled unitaries.
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