On the Fourier transform of the symmetric decreasing rearrangements

Inspired by work of Montgomery on Fourier series and Donoho-Strak in signal processing, we investigate two families of rearrangement inequalities for the Fourier transform. More precisely, we show that the $L^2$ behavior of a Fourier transform of a function over a small set is controlled by the $L^2$ behavior of the Fourier transform of its symmetric decreasing rearrangement. In the $L^1$ case, the same is true if we further assume that the function has a support of finite measure. As a byproduct, we also give a simple proof and an extension of a result of Lieb about the smoothness of a rearrangement. Finally, a straightforward application to solutions of the free Shr"odinger equation is given.