Resumen: The lack of intensity in the central region of Laguerre–Gaussian beams reduces their applicability as illumination sources. For this reason, it is usual to shape a Laguerre–Gaussian beam to a nearly Gaussian beam using a binary phase mask. The behavior of this rectified Laguerre–Gaussian beam is analyzed in this work in the Fresnel regime. A comparison between diverse Laguerre–Gaussian beams with rectified Laguerre–Gaussian beams shows that there appear two different regions along the propagation axis: first is a transition region (for lower distances) with a flat intensity distribution, and next is a second region (for longer distances) where the rectified Laguerre–Gaussian tends to a Gaussian shape. The results of this work are very valuable for the use of this kind of beam in micro-optical applications. Idioma: Inglés DOI: 10.1364/AO.53.006782 Año: 2014 Publicado en: APPLIED OPTICS 53, 29 (2014), [22 pp.] ISSN: 1559-128X Factor impacto JCR: 1.784 (2014) Categ. JCR: OPTICS rank: 36 / 88 = 0.409 (2014) - Q2 - T2 Tipo y forma: Artículo (PostPrint)