A conjecture on optimal quaternary linear codes with one-dimensional Hermitian hull

Linear codes with small hulls over finite fields have been extensively studied due to their practical applications in computational complexity and information protection. In this paper, we develop a general method to determine the exact value of $D_4^H(n,k,1)$ for $n\leq 12$ or $k\in \{1,2,3,n-1,n-2,n-3\}$, where $D_4^H(n,k,1)$ denotes the largest minimum distance among all quaternary linear $[n,k]$ codes with one-dimensional Hermitian hull. As a consequence, we solve a conjecture proposed by Mankean and Jitman on the largest minimum distance of a quaternary linear code with one-dimensional Hermitian hull. As an application, we construct some binary entanglement-assisted quantum error-correcting codes (EAQECCs) from quaternary linear codes with one-dimensional Hermitian hull. Some of these EAQECCs are optimal codes, and some of them are better than previously known ones.