Secure alignment of coordinate systems by using quantum correlation

Abstract

We show that two parties far apart can use shared entangled states and classical communication to align their coordinate systems with a very high fidelity. Moreover compared with previous methods proposed for such a task, i.e. sending parallel or anti-parallel pairs or groups of spin states, our method has the extra advantages of using single qubit measurements and also being secure, so that third parties do not extract any information about the aligned coordinate system established between the two parties. The latter property is important in many other quantum information protocols in which measurements inevitably play a significant role.