Nonlinear ringdowns as sources and detectors of quantum gravitational waves

Abstract Is gravity quantum mechanical? If so, we argue that nonlinear effects in black hole ringdowns—notably second harmonic generation—generates gravitational waves in non-classical states. While quantum features of these states such as sub-Poissonian statistics or entanglement could in principle be measured at interferometric detectors, the tiny coupling of gravity to matter makes this extremely challenging. Drawing on ideas from quantum optics, we instead propose that the nonlinearities in ringdowns could be used as strongly coupled detectors of quantum gravitational radiation, potentially offering a new route to probing the quantum nature of gravity.