Quantum cryptography on noisy channels: Quantum versus classical key-agreement protocols

When the 4-state or the 6-state protocol of quantum cryptography is carried out on a noisy quantum channel, then the raw key has to be processed to re duce the information of a spy down to an arbitrarily low value, providing A lice and Bob with a:secret key. In principle, quantum algorithms as well as classical algorithms can be used for this processing. A natural question i s: Up to which error rate on the raw key is a secret-key agreement at all p ossible? Under the assumption of incoherent eavesdropping, we find that the quantum and classical limits are precisely the same: As long as Alice and Bob share some entanglement, both quantum and classical protocols provide s ecret keys.