Duality and Confinement in Massive Antisymmetric Tensor Gauge Theories

TL;DR

This paper explores the duality between massive antisymmetric tensor gauge theories and topologically massive theories, demonstrating how defect condensation leads to confinement phenomena in various dimensions.

Contribution

It extends the duality framework to include topological defects and generalizes confinement results from 4D to arbitrary dimensions.

Findings

Defect condensation causes electric string confinement in 4D.

Magnetic string confinement is absent in the dual models.

Confinement phases are generalized to all dimensions using duality.

Abstract

We extend the duality between massive and topologically massive antisymmetric tensor gauge theories in arbitrary space-time dimensions to include topological defects. We show explicitly that the condensation of these defects leads, in 4 dimensions, to confinement of electric strings in the two dual models. The dual phase, in which magnetic strings are confined is absent. The presence of the confinement phase explicitly found in the 4-dimensional case, is generalized, using duality arguments, to arbitrary space-time dimensions.