Dimensions of Prym Varieties

Given a tame Galois branched cover of curves pi: X -> Y with any finite Galois group G whose representations are rational, we compute the dimension of the (generalized) Prym variety corresponding to any irreducible representation \rho of G. This formula can be applied to the study of algebraic integrable systems using Lax pairs, in particular systems associated with Seiberg-Witten theory. However, the formula is much more general and its computation and proof are entirely algebraic.