Perturbative analysis of the reheating dynamics of $\alpha$-attractors

Abstract

We study the reheating phase following inflation in the context of single-field models, focusing on the perturbative decay of the inflaton into lighter particles. A general analytical framework is presented to compute the reheating temperature $T_{re}$ and related quantities by combining cosmological observations with model-dependent parameters. We derive expressions for $T_{re}$ for three types of interactions: gravitational, scalar, and Yukawa-type fermionic couplings, and apply these results to the class of $\alpha$-attractor inflationary models, which exhibit attractor behavior in the $(n_s, r)$ plane. The main goal of this work is to investigate how key cosmological quantities such as $T_{re}$, $N_{re}$, and $m_\phi$ among others, evolve with the scalar spectral index $n_s$ and the Yukawa coupling constant $y$, within a consistent analytical framework. Although the formulas used are approximate, they are sufficient to capture the qualitative behavior of the relevant quantities across a wide range of parameter values. Here, we are not interested in precise numerical approximations or data analysis, but rather in understanding the general trends and dependence of cosmological quantities of interest. In particular, tendencies observed in the figures, such as the sensitivity of $T_{re}$ to the coupling strength and the equation-of-state parameter $\omega_{re}$, reflect physical features that are not strongly affected by the approximations involved.