Linear codes with few weights from weakly regular plateaued functions

Linear codes with few nonzero weights have wide applications in secret sharing, authentication codes, association schemes and strongly regular graphs. Recently, Wu et al. (2020) obtained some few-weighted linear codes by employing bent functions. In this paper, inspired by Wu et al. and some pioneers' ideas, we use a kind of functions, namely, general weakly regular plateaued functions, to define the defining sets of linear codes. Then, by utilizing some cyclotomic techniques, we construct some linear codes with few weights and obtain their weight distributions. Notably, some of the obtained codes are almost optimal with respect to the Griesmer bound. Finally, we observe that our newly constructed codes are minimal for almost all cases.