Mechanism of the intrinsic mechanical 1/f frequency-noise plateau

Determine the microscopic mechanism responsible for the excess 1/f frequency-noise plateau observed in mechanical resonators, which remains unexplained despite being reported across diverse materials, device sizes, and transduction schemes.

Background

Mechanical resonators exhibit an excess 1/f frequency-noise floor that is typically one to three orders of magnitude above the thermomechanical limit. The paper surveys measurements across materials, resonator sizes, and transduction schemes and argues that the noise scales with strain-participation volume rather than quality factor.

Although the paper develops an elastic-dipole and fluctuator-based interpretation, the introduction explicitly identifies the underlying origin of the long-observed plateau as unresolved. The open problem is therefore to establish a microscopic explanation for the observed intrinsic flicker noise and its scaling behavior.