Quantized cosmological constant in 1+1 dimensional quantum gravity with coupled scalar matter

A two-dimensional matter-coupled model of quantum gravity is studied in the Dirac approach to constrained dynamics in the presence of a cosmological constant. It is shown that after partial fixing to the conformal gauge, the requirement of a quantum realization of the conformal algebra for physical quantum states of the fields naturally constrains the cosmological constant to take values in a well-determined and mostly discrete spectrum. Furthermore, the contribution of the quantum fluctuations of the single dynamical degree of freedom in the gravitational sector, namely the conformal mode, to the cosmological constant is negative, in contrast to the positive contributions of the quantum fluctuations of the matter fields, possibly opening an avenue towards addressing the cosmological constant problem in a more general context.