Effect of disorder on hyperbolic metamaterials

Based on a modified retrieving method, we demonstrate that hyperbolic metamaterials (HMs) have considerable robustness against disorders, even when the disorder strength is quite large. Our retrieval method is more precise when retrieving the parameters for anisotropic metamaterials. We also show that the light's negative refraction of an HM is nearly unaffected when relatively large disorders exist. These results help us to understand the HMs and they have a direct significance for experiments.