Relativistic Position Verification with Coherent States
Abstract
Determining the position of an entity is a fundamental prerequisite for nearly all activities. Classical means, however, have been proven incapable of providing secure position verification, meaning that a prover can mislead verifiers about its actual position. In this work, we propose and experimentally realize a secure position-verification protocol that leverages quantum optics and relativity within an information-theoretic framework. Using phase-randomized weak coherent states, two verifiers separated by 2 km securely verify the prover's position with an accuracy better than 75 meters. These results establish secure position-based authentication as a practical possibility, paving the way for applications in financial transactions, disaster response, and authenticated secure communications.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.01787,
title = {Relativistic Position Verification with Coherent States},
author = {Guan-Jie Fan-Yuan and Yang-Guang Shan and Cong Zhang and Yu-Long Wang and Yu-Xuan Fan and Wei-Xin Xie and De-Yong He and Shuang Wang and Zhen-Qiang Yin and Wei Chen and Song-Nian Fu and Guang-Can Guo and Zheng-Fu Han},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.01787},
year = {2026}
}