  A K-mirror is a device that rotates the wavefront of an incident optical
field. It has recently gained prominence over Dove prism, another commonly used
wavefront rotator, due to the fact that while a K-mirror has several controls
for adjusting the internal reflections, a Dove prism is made of a single glass
element with no additional control. Thus, one can obtain much lower angular
deviations of transmitting wavefronts using a K-mirror than with a Dove prism.
However, the accompanying polarization changes in the transmitted field due to
rotation persist even in the commercially available K-mirrors. A recent
theoretical work [Applied Optics, 61, 8302 (2022)] shows that it is possible to
optimize the base angle of a K-mirror for a given refractive index such that
the accompanying polarization changes are minimum. In contrast, we show in this
article that by optimizing the refractive index it is possible to design a
K-mirror at any given base angle and with any given value for the mean
polarization change, including near-zero values. Furthermore, we experimentally
demonstrate a K-mirror with an order-of-magnitude lower mean polarization
change than that of the commercially available K-mirrors. This can have
important practical implications for OAM-based applications that require
precise wavefront rotation control.
