Private classical capacity with symmetric assistance

We study the symmetric-side-channel-assisted private capacity of a quantum channel, for which we provide a singleletter formula. This capacity is additive, convex, and, for degradable channels, equal to the unassisted private capacity. While a channel's (unassisted) capacity for private classical communication may be strictly larger than its quantum capacity, we will show that these capacities are equal for degradable channels, thus demonstrating the equivalence of privacy and quantum coherence in this context. We use these ideas to find new bounds on the key rate of quantum key distribution protocols with one-way classical post-processing. For the Bennett-Brassard-84 (BB84) protocol, our results demonstrate that collective attacks are strictly stronger than individual attacks. © 2008 IEEE.