Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity and rotating black holes

A bstract We show that the free energy at low temperatures for near-extremal black holes is correctly obtained from the Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) model of gravity. Our arguments apply to all black holes, including rotating ones, whose metric has a near-horizon AdS 2 factor and the associated SL (2 , ℝ) symmetry. We verify these arguments by explicit calculations for rotating black holes in 4 and 5 dimensions. Our results suggest that the JT model could prove useful in analysing the dynamics of near-extremal Kerr black holes found in nature.