Do Laguerre–Gaussian beams recover their spatial properties after all obstacles?

It has been known for some time that Bessel–Gaussian beams and their associated families self-heal after encountering obstacles. Recently, it has been shown theoretically and experimentally that radial mode Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) beams would likewise self-heal. In this work, we show that the self-healing occurs after opaque disks but not after circular apertures. We put forward arguments to explain this and perform key experiments, assessing the impact of obstructions on the usual intensity reconstruction, as well as the focal shift effect and the beam propagation factor, $$M^2$$ . In addition, these results are supported by a physical interpretation based on the Abbe experiment of spatial frequency filtering, highlighting that the self-healing process requires a high-spatial frequency component to the field, i.e., LG beams self-heal when modulated by a low spatial frequency filter (opaque disk) but not when modulated by a high-spatial frequency filter (circular aperture). We believe that this work will contribute significantly to the field of laser beam propagation through obstacles.