The principles of quantum field theory in flat spacetime suggest that gravityis mediated by a massless particle with helicity $\pm2$, the so-calledgraviton. It is regarded as textbook knowledge that, when the self-coupling ofa particle with these properties is considered, the long-wavelength structureof such a nonlinear theory is fixed to be that of general relativity. However,here we show that these arguments conceal an implicit assumption which issurreptitiously motivated by the very knowledge of general relativity. This isshown by providing a counterexample: we revisit a nonlinear theory of gravitywhich is not structurally equivalent to general relativity and that, in thenon-interacting limit, describes a free helicity $\pm2$ graviton. We explicitlyprove that this theory can be understood as the result of self-coupling incomplete parallelism to the well-known case of general relativity. Theassumption which was seen as natural in previous analyses but biased the resultis pointed out. This special relativistic field theory of gravity implies thedecoupling of vacuum zero-point energies of matter and passes all the knownexperimental tests in gravitation.
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