The Cosmological Constant of One-Dimensional Matter Coupled Quantum Gravity is Quantized

Abstract

Coupling any interacting quantum mechanical system to gravity in one dimension requires the cosmological constant to belong to the matter energy spectrum and thus to be quantized, even though the gravity sector is free of any quantum dynamics, while physical states are also confined to the subspace of matter quantum states whose energy coincides with the cosmological constant value. These general facts are illustrated through some simple examples. The physical projector quantization approach readily leads to the correct representation of such systems, whereas other approaches relying on gauge fixing methods are often plagued by Gribov problems in which case the quantization rule is not properly recovered. Whether such a quantization of the cosmological constant as well as the other ensuing consequences in terms of physical states extend to higher dimensional matter-gravity coupled quantum systems is clearly a fascinating open issue.