Suppression of left-handed properties in disordered metamaterials

We show that disorder can modify dramatically the effective magnetic response of a composite metamaterial including its specific property of negative refraction. We demonstrate that a relatively weak disorder in the parameters of the split-ring resonators can reduce and even completely eliminate the finite frequency range where the metamaterial possesses the left-handed properties. This effect is expected to be crucially important for a design of metamaterials operating in the terahertz or visible region of the frequency spectrum.