New Physics and Short-Distance s->d gamma Transition in Omega^- -> Cascade^- gamma Decay

We study the contributions of physics beyond the standard model to the short-distance s->d gamma transition in Omega^- -> Cascade^- gamma decay. We explore the possibility that the new interactions remove the chirality suppression which occurs in the standard-model contribution to s->d gamma and enhance the effect of this coupling by factors of a heavy-mass scale relative to the s-quark mass. We consider two of the popular models for new physics, and, after taking into account constraints from other processes, find that their contributions can be larger than that of the standard model by up to a few times, which suggests that the yet unobserved Omega^- -> Cascade^- gamma decay is a likely probe for new physics.