Constraining α-attractor models from reheating
Abstract
We eliminate the parameters originally present in models of inflation of the α-attractor type in favor of the scalar spectral index ns and the tensor-to-scalar ratio r. We then write expressions for the number of e-folds during reheating N re . By imposing reasonable conditions on Nre we can restrict ns and r and in turn, we use these constraints in order to find bounds for cosmological quantities of interest such as the number of e-folds during inflation and the radiation dominated eras, as well as for the reheating temperature and the running index. The minimum condition that N re must satisfy is N re≥ 0 which we use to constrain the cosmological quantities mentioned above. In particular, we find that the tensor-to-scalar ratio r (and as a consequence the energy scale of inflation) is bounded from below. We provide figures illustrating the behavior of these quantities as functions of r for several values of ns and tables containing the bounds so obtained.