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Abstract

We study the potential of gravitational wave astronomy to observe the quantum
aspects of black holes. According to Bekenstein's quantization, we find that
black hole area discretization can have observable imprints on the
gravitational wave signal from an inspiraling binary black hole. We study the
impact of quantization on tidal heating. We model the absorption lines and
compute gravitational wave flux due to tidal heating in such a case. By
including the quantization we find the dephasing of the gravitational wave, to
our knowledge it has never been done before. We discuss the observability of
the phenomena in different parameter ranges of the binary. We show that in the
inspiral, it leads to vanishing tidal heating for the high spin values.
Therefore measuring non-zero tidal heating can rule out area quantization. We
also argue that if area quantization is present in nature then our current
modeling with reflectivity can possibly probe the Hawking radiation which may
bring important information regarding the quantum nature of gravity.