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Noise Properties of Superconducting Coplanar Waveguide Microwave Resonators

We have measured noise in thin-film superconducting coplanar waveguide resonators. This noise appears entirely as phase noise, equivalent to a jitter of the resonance frequency. In contrast, amplitude fluctuations are not observed at the sensitivity of our measurement. The ratio between the noise power in the phase and amplitude directions is large, in excess of 30 dB. These results have important implications for resonant readouts of various devices such as detectors, amplifiers, and qubits. We suggest that the phase noise is due to two-level systems in dielectric materials.