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

Abstract

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, $N_{reh}$, and on the reheating temperature, $T_{reh}$, simulating possible and future results given by the next-generation of cosmological missions. Moreover, we stress what kinds of equation-of-state parameter, $w_{reh}$, 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 $r$.