A note on micro-instability for Hamiltonian systems close to integrable In this note, we consider the dynamics associated to a perturbation of an integrable Hamiltonian system in action-angle coordinates in any number of degrees of freedom and we prove the following result of ``micro-diffusion'': under generic assumptions on $ h$ and $ f$, there exists an orbit of the system for which the drift of its action variables is at least of order $ \sqrt {\varepsilon }$, after a time of order $ \sqrt {\varepsilon }^{-1}$. The assumptions, which are essentially minimal, are that there exists a resonant point for $ h$ and that the corresponding averaged perturbation is non-constant. The conclusions, although very weak when compared to usual instability phenomena, are also essentially optimal within this setting. 144 4 1553-1560 1553-1560 American Mathematical Society