Logarithmic Corrections to Kerr Thermodynamics

TL;DR

The paper investigates logarithmic corrections to the thermodynamics of near-extremal Kerr black holes by studying the near-horizon extremal Kerr (NHEK) throat, whose Euclidean path integral is plagued by infrared divergences from normalizable zero modes. By incorporating the leading finite-temperature correction through a not-NHEK geometry, the authors lift these zero modes and compute the resulting temperature-dependent eigenvalue shifts, obtaining a universal $\frac{3}{2}\log T$ contribution to the near-extremal entropy. This demonstrates that the extremal ground-state degeneracy is replaced by a dense band of states at small but finite temperature, consistent with Schwarzian-like dynamics and Kerr/CFT intuition. The work parallels AdS$_2$ analyses for charged black holes and strengthens the view that logarithmic corrections to Kerr thermodynamics are governed by a universal Schwarzian-like sector in the throat.

Abstract

Recent work has shown that loop corrections from massless particles generate $\frac{3}{2}\log T_{\text{Hawking}}$ corrections to black hole entropy which dominate the thermodynamics of cold near-extreme charged black holes. Here we adapt this analysis to near-extreme Kerr black holes. Like AdS$_2\times S^2$, the Near-Horizon Extreme Kerr (NHEK) metric has a family of normalizable zero modes corresponding to reparametrizations of boundary time. The path integral over these zero modes leads to an infrared divergence in the one-loop approximation to the Euclidean NHEK partition function. We regulate this divergence by retaining the leading finite temperature correction in the NHEK scaling limit. This "not-NHEK" geometry lifts the eigenvalues of the zero modes, rendering the path integral infrared finite. The quantum-corrected near-extremal entropy exhibits $\frac{3}{2}\log T_{\text{Hawking}}$ behavior characteristic of the Schwarzian model and predicts a lifting of the ground state degeneracy for the extremal Kerr black hole.