The Eta Pairing Revisited

Abstract

In this paper, we simplify and extend the Eta pairing, originally discovered in the setting of supersingular curves by Barreto , to ordinary curves. Furthermore, we show that by swapping the arguments of the Eta pairing, one obtains a very efficient algorithm resulting in a speed-up of a factor of around six over the usual Tate pairing, in the case of curves that have large security parameters, complex multiplication by an order of Qopf (radic-3), and when the trace of Frobenius is chosen to be suitably small. Other, more minor savings are obtained for more general curves