This project overcomes a key bottleneck of trapped-ion quantum computing: the need for frequent, time-consuming recooling to maintain high-fidelity entangling gates. Instead of insisting on motional ground states, we develop and demonstrate a high-fidelity, thermally resilient universal gate-set based on a novel version of the light-shift (LS) gate that operates reliably on warm, multi-mode ion strings. Our core idea is to embed robustness directly into the entangling interactions. Building on and extending optimally controlled quantum gates (including shaped pulses, composite pulses and dynamical decoupling), we design multi-tone, time-modulated, composite LS gates that (i) cancel leading-order errors from amplitude miscalibration, detuning, mode-frequency drift and cross-talk, and (ii) tolerate significantly elevated motional excitation. Analytic design rules and error bounds are combined with numerical optimisation pipelines and integrated device-level noise models. The gate families and control strategies developed by SOF and ICL will be implemented and benchmarked on state-of-the-art trapped-ion platforms at UIBK and on a commercial system from AQT, our industrial partner. We target two-qubit gate errors at or below 2×10⁻⁵ on ion strings of ≥10 ions, with at least a five-fold reduction in duty cycle and a clear path to ~30× speed-up in time-to-solution by eliminating repeated recooling steps. By delivering a validated, warm-tolerant LS gate toolbox integrated into a commercial trapped-ion stack, the project directly advances the Applied Quantum Science goals of QuantERA. It transforms trapped-ion devices from “high-fidelity but cooling-limited” prototypes into fast, reliable processors, strengthens European industrial capabilities in quantum hardware, and trains a new generation of researchers at the interface of AMO physics, quantum control and electronics.
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