On the principal minors of Fourier matrices

Abstract: For the $N$-dimensional Fourier matrix $\mathcal{F}_N$, we prove that if $N\geq 4$ is square-free, then every $2 \times 2$ and $3\times 3$ principal minor of $\mathcal{F}_N$ is nonzero. We also show that if $N\geq 4$ is not square-free, then $\mathcal{F}_N$ has zero principal minors of all sizes. Moreover, based on numerical experiments, we conjecture that if $N$ is square-free, then all principal minors of $\mathcal{F}_N$ are nonzero.