Experiment performed by physicists at NIST, as described in "Multi-element logic gates for trapped ion qubits" in December 17, 2015 issue of Nature, involved manipulation of one magnesium and one beryllium ion (charged atom) confined in custom trap. Using 2 sets of laser beams to entangle 2 ions, scientists also performed 2 types of logic operations: a controlled NOT (CNOT) gate and SWAP gate. Possible applications include performing logic operations for quantum computers.