Confining Effective Theories Based on Instantons and Merons

An effective theory based on ensembles of either regular gauge instantons or merons is shown to produce confinement in SU(2) Yang-Mills theory. When the scale is set by the string tension, the action density, topological susceptibility and low-lying glueball spectrum are similar to those arising in lattice QCD. The physical mechanism producing confinement is explained, and a number of analytical insights into the effective theory are presented.