English

Closing the Cosmographic Hierarchy: Dynamical Attractors from Inflation to Reheating

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-05-13 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We develop a potential-independent cosmographic framework, in which cosmographic parameters are promoted to dynamical variables within a closed autonomous system. Although the cosmographic hierarchy is formally infinite, we achieve closure by mapping potential slow-roll parameters onto the kinematic phase space within General Relativity with a minimally coupled scalar field. Within this framework, we perform a stability analysis and show that inflationary (quasi-de Sitter) solutions arise as natural attractors, while stiff-fluid configurations act as repellers without invoking the slow-roll approximation. To describe the transition to standard Big Bang evolution, we extend the system to include a radiation component and a phenomenological decay term. This leads to a generalized, potential-independent description of reheating characterized by an effective equation of state weffw_{\rm eff}. We demonstrate that the radiation-dominated phase is the late-time attractor of the extended system. These results provide a unified kinematical description of the expansion history from inflation through reheating, bridging cosmography and scalar field dynamics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.11292,
  title  = {Closing the Cosmographic Hierarchy: Dynamical Attractors from Inflation to Reheating},
  author = {Seturumane Tema and S. Shajidul Haque and Saurya Das and Peter Dunsby},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.11292},
  year   = {2026}
}