Lower bounds on maximal determinants of binary matrices via the probabilistic method

Let $D(n)$ be the maximal determinant for $n \times n$ $\{\pm 1\}$-matrices, and ${\mathcal R}(n) = D(n)/n^{n/2}$ be the ratio of $D(n)$ to the Hadamard upper bound. We give several new lower bounds on ${\mathcal R}(n)$ in terms of $d$, where $n = h+d$, $h$ is the order of a Hadamard matrix, and $h$ is maximal subject to $h \le n$. A relatively simple bound is $${\mathcal R}(n) \ge \left(\frac{2}{\pi e}\right)^{d/2} \left(1 - d^2\left(\frac{\pi}{2h}\right)^{1/2}\right) \;\text{ for all }\; n \ge 1.$$ An asymptotically sharper bound is $${\mathcal R}(n) \ge \left(\frac{2}{\pi e}\right)^{d/2} \exp\left(d\left(\frac{\pi}{2h}\right)^{1/2} + \; O\left(\frac{d^{5/3}}{h^{2/3}}\right)\right).$$ We also show that $${\mathcal R}(n) \ge \left(\frac{2}{\pi e}\right)^{d/2}$$ if $n \ge n_0$ and $n_0$ is sufficiently large, the threshold $n_0$ being independent of $d$, or for all $n\ge 1$ if $0 \le d \le 3$ (which would follow from the Hadamard conjecture). The proofs depend on the probabilistic method, and generalise previous results that were restricted to the cases $d=0$ and $d=1$.