Abstract
The propagation of gravitational waves on the background of a nonperturbative vacuum of a spinor field is considered. It is shown that there are several distinctive features in comparison with the propagation of plane gravitational waves through empty space: there exists a fixed phase difference between the $$h_{yy,zz}$$ and $$h_{yz}$$ components of the wave; the phase and group velocities of gravitational waves are not equal to the velocity of light; the group velocity is always less than the velocity of light; under some conditions the gravitational waves are either damped or absent; for given frequency, there exist two waves with different wave vectors. We also discuss the possibility of an experimental verification of the obtained effects as a tool to investigate nonperturbative quantum field theories.