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

We study four-dimensional N = 2 supersymmetricpure-gauge (Seiberg-Witten) theory and its N = 1 mass perturbation by using compactification on S¹ × 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 four-dimensionaltheory — the magneticbion 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.