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Description
The next decade will bring unprecedented amounts of data improving our understanding of the very early universe, including Cosmic Microwave Background observations as well as optical and radio surveys. These will, for the first time, shed light on the transition from cosmic inflation to a radiation-dominated hot big bang, known as cosmic reheating, closing a critical missing link in physical cosmology. Two complementary observational avenues can make this possible: The improved determination of the distribution of matter in the universe and a potential discovery of primordial gravitational waves. We illustrate for selected models of inflation how much can be learnt about the reheating temperature and the underlying particle physics theories.