Generation of rectangular optical waves by relativistic clipping

Theoretical results are reported, concerning the reflection and transmission of few-cycle laser pulses on a very thin conducting layer, which may represent the surface current density of the massless charges of graphene. It is shown that the pulse may undergo violent distortions, even at moderate intensities, to that extent, that the scattered radiation contains rectangular trains, which are approximate realizations of Rademacher functions in the optical or terahertz regime.