  In some quantum computing (QC) architectures, entanglement of an arbitrary
number of qubits can be generated in a single operation. This property has many
potential applications, and may specifically be useful for quantum error
correction (QEC). Stabilizer measurements can then be implemented using a
single multi-qubit gate instead of several two-qubit gates, thus reducing
circuit depth. In this study, the toric code is used as a benchmark to compare
the performance of two-qubit and five-qubit gates within parity-check circuits.
We consider trapped ion qubits that are controlled via Raman transitions, where
the primary source of error is assumed to be spontaneous photon scattering. We
show that a five-qubit M{\o}lmer-S{\o}rensen gate offers an approximately
$40\%$ improvement over two-qubit gates in terms of the fault tolerance
threshold. This result indicates an advantage of using multi-qubit gates in the
context of QEC.
