On some properties of the Mittag-Leffler function $\mathbf{E_\alpha(-t^\alpha)}$, completely monotone for $\mathbf{t> 0}$ with $\mathbf{0<\alpha<1}$

We analyse some peculiar properties of the function of the Mittag-Leffler (M-L) type, $e_\alpha(t) := E_\alpha(-t^\alpha)$ for $0 0$, which is known to be completely monotone (CM) with a non-negative spectrum of frequencies and times, suitable to model fractional relaxation processes. We first note that (surprisingly) these two spectra coincide so providing a universal scaling property of this function, not well pointed out in the literature. Furthermore, we consider the problem of approximating our M-L function with simpler CM functions for small and large times. We provide two different sets of elementary CM functions that are asymptotically equivalent to $e_\alpha(t)$ as $t\to 0$ and $t\to +\infty$. The first set is given by the stretched exponential for small times and the power law for large times, following a standard approach. For the second set we chose two rational CM functions in $t^\alpha$, obtained as the Pad\`e Approximants (PA) $[0/1]$ to the convergent series in positive powers (as $t\to 0$) and to the asymptotic series in negative powers (as $t\to \infty$), respectively. From numerical computations we are allowed to the conjecture that the second set provides upper and lower bounds to the Mittag-Leffler function.