Genus drop in hyperelliptic Feynman integrals

The maximal cut of the nonplanar crossed box diagram with all massive internal propagators was long ago shown to encode a hyperelliptic curve of genus 3 in momentum space. Surprisingly, in Baikov representation, the maximal cut of this diagram only gives rise to a hyperelliptic curve of genus 2. To show that these two representations are in agreement, we identify a hidden involution symmetry that is satisfied by the genus 3 curve, which allows it to be algebraically mapped to the curve of genus 2. We then argue that this is just the first example of a general mechanism by means of which hyperelliptic curves in Feynman integrals can drop from genus g to left ceiling g/2 right ceiling or [g/2]. We find an algorithm to test for the presence of genus drop, and highlight further instances of this mechanism in Feynman integrals.