On the Interaction of Fermion and Boson Fields with the Gravitational Field

We point out that the gravitational field taken by itself cannot be considered as a gauge field. Only an affinity and not a metric can serve as a gauge field. Originally, metric and affinity are completely independent of each other. This fact allows in a natural way to formulate a restricted principle of relativity, according to which only fermion fields may show that there exist a priori distinguished frames of reference. Furthermore, we can couple the gravitational field to boson and fermion fields such that the flat metric or tetrads orthonormalized with respect to this flat metric appearing in the special relativistic matter Lagrangian, are replaced by a Riemannian metric and tetrads orthonormalized with respect to this metric (principle of most minimal gravitational coupling). This coupling principle is a strong restriction on the existence of independent boson fields. Only scalar and vector fields and their different pseudoquantities are possible as independent fields. Boson fields of higher rank are to be considered as fusions of these (pseudo)scalar and (pseudo)vector fields. Theire field equations follow from those of the (pseudo)scalar and (pseudo)vector fields.