Seiberg-Witten and 'Polyakov-like' Magnetic Bion Confinements are Continuously Connected
We study four-dimensional N = 2 supersymmetric pure-gauge (Seiberg-Witten) theory and its N = 1 mass perturbation by using compactification on S{sup 1} x R{sup 3}. It is well known that on R{sup 4} (or at large S{sup 1} size L) the perturbed theory realizes confinement through monopole or dyon condensation. At small S{sup 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.