Optimum ratio between two bases in Bennett-Brassard 1984 protocol with second order analysis (2201.11960v1)

Abstract: Bennet-Brassard 1984 (BB84) protocol, we optimize the ratio of the choice of two bases, the bit basis and the phase basis by using the second order expansion for the length of the generation keys under the coherent attack. This optimization addresses the trade-off between the loss of transmitted bits due to the disagreement of their bases and the estimation error of the error rate in the phase basis. Then, we derive the optimum ratio and the optimum length of the generation keys with the second order asymptotics. Surprisingly, the second order has the order $n^{3/4}$, which is much larger than the second order $n^{1/2}$ in the conventional setting when $n$ is the number of quantum communication. This fact shows that our setting has much larger importance for the second order analysis than the conventional problem. To illustrate this importance, we numerically plot the effect of the second order correction.