Electric confinement and magnetic superconductors

Reinterpretation of the pioneering work of Nielsen and Olesen and others on magnetic confinement in (electric) superconductors leads to simple models which exhibit electric confinement of the type hoped for in quantum chromodynamics. “Electric” flux tubes joining “quarks” arise at a semi-classical level as a result of the existence of (pseudo) particles. The theory can be described in terms of a classical action principle only upon suitable modification of the action; this modification has profound topological significance as it is intimately related to the quantization condition for (pseudo) particles.