Effective Lagrangians and universality classes of nonlinear bigravity

Abstract

We discuss the fully non-linear formulation of multigravity. The concept of universality classes of effective Lagrangians describing bigravity, which is the simplest form of multigravity, is introduced. We show that non-linear multigravity theories can naturally arise in several different physical contexts: brane configurations, certain Kaluza-Klein reductions and some non-commutative geometry models. The formal and phenomenological aspects of multigravity (including the problems linked to the linearized theory of massive gravitons) are briefly discussed.