Insights for Early Dark Energy with Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

Abstract: Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), as one of the earliest processes in the universe accessible to direct observation, offers a powerful and independent probe of the cosmic expansion history. With recent advances in both theory and observation, including efficient and flexible BBN codes, percent-level measurements of primordial deuterium and helium-4 abundances, refined measurements of nuclear reaction rates, and precise determinations of the baryon density from the cosmic microwave background, particularly keen insights can be gained from BBN. In this work, we leverage these developments to place model-independent constraints on deviations from the Standard Model expansion history during BBN. Using the latest abundance data, we apply principal component analysis to identify the most constrained and physically meaningful modes of expansion history variation. This approach allows us to impose the most general constraints on early dark energy during the epoch of BBN. We further examine whether general modifications to the expansion rate could alleviate the long-standing lithium problem. Our results demonstrate that BBN, sharpened by modern data and statistical techniques, remains an indispensable probe of dark energy and new physics in the early universe.