Modulational instability in nonlinear nonlocal equations of regularized long wave type

Abstract: We study the stability and instability of periodic traveling waves in the vicinity of the origin in the spectral plane, for equations of Benjamin- Bona-Mahony (BBM) and regularized Boussinesq types permitting nonlocal dispersion. We extend recent results for equations of Korteweg-de Vries type and derive modulational instability indices as functions of the wave number of the underlying wave. We show that a sufficiently small, periodic traveling wave of the BBM equation is spectrally unstable to long wavelength perturbations if the wave number is greater than a critical value and a sufficiently small, periodic traveling wave of the regularized Boussinesq equation is stable to square integrable perturbations.