Entanglement generation in trapped-ion systems has relied thus far on two distinct but related geometric phase gate techniques: Molmer-Sorensen and light-shift gates. We recently proposed a variant of the light-shift scheme where the qubit levels are separated by an optical frequency [B. C. Sawyer and K. R. Brown, Phys. Rev. A 103, 022427 (2021)]. Here we report an experimental demonstration of this entangling gate using a pair of $^{40}$Ca$^+$ ions in a cryogenic surface-electrode ion trap and a commercial, high-power, 532 nm Nd:YAG laser. Generating a Bell state in 35 $mu$s, we directly measure an infidelity of $6(3) times 10^{-4}$ without subtraction of experimental errors. The 532 nm gate laser wavelength suppresses intrinsic photon scattering error to $sim 1 times 10^{-5}$. This result establishes our scheme as competitive with previously demonstrated entangling gates.
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