On minors of maximal determinant matrices

Abstract

By an old result of Cohn (1965), a Hadamard matrix of order n has no proper Hadamard submatrices of order m > n/2. We generalise this result to maximal determinant submatrices of Hadamard matrices, and show that an interval of length ∼ n/2 is excluded from the allowable orders. We make a conjecture regarding a lower bound for sums of squares of minors of maximal determinant matrices, and give evidence to support it. We give tables of the values taken by the minors of all maximal determinant matrices of orders ≤ 21 and make some observations on the data. Finally, we describe the algorithms that were used to compute the tables.