I don't know where you got those numbers from.
sqrt(n)+sqrt(n/b)+sqrt(n/b^2)+... versus sqrt(n)+sqrt(n/2)+sqrt(n/4)+...
And since b-tree nodes can be half empty, there's a sqrt(2) uncertainty. (And of course there is no other memory overhead at all, none whatsoever.)
Or less generally: it takes sqrt(j) nanoseconds to dereference the pointer with value j, and parent nodes are at smaller addresses than their children.