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-1 x R-3. It is well known that on R-4 (or at large S-1 size L) 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.