Seiberg-Witten and "Polyakov-like" magnetic bion cofinements are continuously connected

Abstract

We study four-dimensional N=2 supersymmetric pure-gauge (Seiberg-Witten) theory and its N = 1 mass perturbation by using compactification on S1 b*R3. It is well known that on R4 (or at large S1 size L) the perturbed theory realizes confinement through monopole or dyon condensation. At small S1, we demonstrate that confinement is induced by a generalization of Polyakov's three-dimensional instanton mechanism to a locally fourdimensional theory| the magnetic bion mechanism| which also applies to a large class of nonsupersymmetric theories. Using a large- vs. small-L Poisson duality, we show that the two mechanisms of confinement, previously thought to be distinct, are in fact continuously connected.