We show that the self-interactions present in the effective field theory formulation of general relativity can couple gravitational wave modes and generate nonclassical states. The output of gravitational nonlinear processes can also be sensitive to quantum features of the input states, indicating that nonlinearities can act both as sources and detectors of quantum features of gravitational waves. Due to gauge and quantization issues in strongly curved spacetimes, we work in the geometric optics limit of gravitational radiation, but we expect that the key ideas extend to situations of astrophysical interest. This offers a new direction for probing the quantum nature of gravity, analogous to how the quantumness of electrodynamics was established through quantum optics.

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• Gravitational waves
• Quantum optics