Zigzag approach to higher key rate of sending-or-not-sending twin field quantum key distribution with finite-key effects

Odd-parity error rejection (OPER), in particular the method of actively odd parity pairing (AOPP), can drastically improve the asymptotic key rate of sending-or-not-sending twin-field (SNS-TF) quantum key distribution (QKD). However, in practice, the finite-key effects have to be considered for the security. Here, we propose a zigzag approach to verify the phase-flip error of the survived bits after OPER or AOPP. Based on this, we can take all the finite-key effects efficiently in calculating the non-asymptotic key rate. Numerical simulation shows that our approach here produces the highest key rate over all distances among all existing methods, improving the key rate by more than 100% to 3000% in comparison with different prior art methods with typical experimental setting. These verify the advantages of the AOPP method with finite data size. Also, with our zigzag approach here, the non-asymptotic key rate of SNS-TF QKD can by far break the absolute bound of repeater-less key rate with whatever detection efficiency. We can even reach a non-asymptotic key rate more than 40 times of the practical bound and 13 times of the absolute bound with 1012 pulses.