Testing cosmological models and understanding cosmological parameter determinations with metaparameters

Cosmological parameters affect observables in physically distinct ways. For example, the baryon density, omega_b, affects the ionization history and also the pressure of the pre-recombination fluid. To investigate the relative importance of different physical effects to the determination of omega_b, and to test the cosmological model, we artificially split omega_b into two `metaparameters': omega_{be} which controls the ionization history and omega_{bp} which plays the role of omega_b for everything else. In our demonstration of the technique we find omega_b = .0229 +/- .0012 (with no parameter splitting), omega_{bp} = .0238 +/- .0021, omega_{be}= .0150 +/- .0034 and omega_{bp}-omega_{be} = .0088 +/- .0039.