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

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the confinement mechanisms in supersymmetric gauge theories, specifically the Seiberg-Witten and magnetic bion mechanisms, are continuously connected through a duality, unifying different confinement descriptions.

Contribution

It reveals a continuous connection between monopole/dyon condensation and magnetic bion mechanisms in gauge theories via a large-small compactification duality.

Findings

Confinement mechanisms are connected across different regimes.

Magnetic bion mechanism generalizes Polyakov's instanton approach.

Duality links supersymmetric and nonsupersymmetric confinement.

Abstract

We study four-dimensional N=2 supersymmetric pure-gauge (Seiberg-Witten) theory and its N=1 mass perturbation by using compactification S**1 x R**3. It is well known that on R**4 (or at large S**1) the perturbed theory realizes confinement through monopole or dyon condensation. At small S**1, we demonstrate that confinement is induced by a generalization of Polyakov's three-dimensional instanton mechanism to a locally four-dimensional 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.