Abstract
An investigation has been made of modulational instability of a nonlinear ion acoustic wave in a weakly relativistic warm unmagnetized nonthermal plasma whose constituents are an inertial ion fluid and nonthermally distributed electrons. Up to the second order of the perturbation theory, a nonlinear Schrödinger type (NST) equation for the complex amplitude of the perturbed ion density is obtained. The coefficients of this equation show that the relativistic effect, the finite ion temperature and the nonthermal electrons modify the condition of the modulational stability. The association between the small-wavenumber limit of the NST equation and the oscillatory solution of the Korteweg-de Varies equation, obtained by a reductive perturbation theory, is satisfied.