Static Q̄Q potentials and the magnetic component of QCD plasma near T_c

Static quark-antiquark potential encodes important information on the chromodynamical interaction between color charges, and recent lattice results show its very nontrivial behavior near the deconfinement temperature T _c. In this paper we study such potential in the framework of the "magnetic scenario" for the near T_c QCD plasma, and particularly focus on the linear part (as quantified by its slope, the tension) in the potential as well as the strong splitting between the free energy and internal energy. By using an analytic "ellipsoidal bag" model, we will quantitatively relate the free energy tension to the magnetic condensate density and relate the internal energy tension to the thermal monopole density. By converting the lattice results for static potential into density for thermal monopoles we find the density to be very large around T_c and indicate at quantum coherence, in good agreement with direct lattice calculation of such density. A few important consequences for heavy ion collisions phenomenology will also be discussed.