Universal Confining Strings: From Compact QED to the Hadron Spectrum

We investigate the description of quark confinement in terms of confining strings or flux tubes. We show that compact QED with a topological $θ$-term, in the dyon condensation phase, is described by a {\it massive} two-form field $B_{μν}$ that gives rise to a string theory with an IR Brazovskii-Lifs