Constraining the general reheating phase in the $\alpha$-attractor inflationary cosmology

In this paper we constrain some aspects of the general postinflationary phase in the context of superconformal $\alpha$-attractor models of inflation. In particular, we provide constraints on the duration of the reheating process, $N_{\mathrm{reh}}$, and on the reheating temperature, $T_{\mathrm{reh}}$, simulating possible and future results given by the next generation of cosmological missions. Moreover, we stress what kinds of equation-of-state parameter, $w_{\mathrm{reh}}$, are favored for different scenarios. The analysis does not depend on the details of the reheating phase, and it is performed assuming different measurements of the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$.

Figure 1

Typical shape of an $E$-model $\alpha$-attractor function.

Figure 2

Distribution of the variable ${\varphi }_{\mathrm{end}}$ when a mean value ${\mu }_r=0.003$ is detected.