Duality and confinement in massive antisymmetric tensor gauge theories

We extend the duality between massive and topologically massive antisymmetr ic tensor gauge theories in arbitrary spacetime dimensions to include topol ogical defects. We show explicitly that the condensation of these defects l eads, in 4 dimensions, to confinement of electric strings in the two dual m odels. The dual phase, in which magnetic strings are confined is absent. Th e presence of the confinement phase explicitly found in the 3-dimensional c ase, is generalized, using duality arguments, to arbitrary space-time dimen sions. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.