  We present an alternative scheme for the generation of a 2-qubit quantum gate
interaction between laser-cooled trapped ions. The scheme is based on the AC
Stark shift (lightshift) induced by laser light resonant with the ionic
transition frequency. At {\it specific} laser intensities, the shift of the
ionic levels allows the resonant excitation of transitions involving the
exchange of motional quanta. We compare the performance of this scheme with
respect to that of related ion-trap proposals and find that, for an
experimental realisation using travelling-wave radiation and working in the
Lamb-Dicke regime, an improvement of over an order of magnitude in the gate
switching rate is possible.
