Ussually we call that operation "taking the magnitude" rather than "taking the determinant".
The magnigude of H(jw) tells the magnitude response for sine waves driving the system. A sine wave drives the input and another sine wave with a partiular magnitude and phase comes out. |H(jw)| tells the ratio of magnitudes as output over input. A magnitude response of 1 is an all-pass filter. That filter might modify the phase of the output, but the magnitude is unalterred.