Coherent and incoherent metamaterials and order-disorder transitions

We present a concept of coherent and incoherent metamaterials, which show distinctly different resonant behavior upon disordering of their initially regular lattices. In the case of a coherent metamaterial a regular ensemble of metamolecules exhibits a collective narrow-band response that becomes broader and eventually disappears with increasing disorder, while in an incoherent metamaterial the disorder has little effect on the structure's resonant properties.