Modulational instability of electromagnetic waves in a collisional quantum magnetoplasma

The modulational instability of right-hand circularly polarized electromagnetic electron cyclotron (CPEM-EC) wave in a magnetized quantum plasma is studied taking into account the collisional effects. Employing quantum hydrodynamic and nonlinear Schrödinger equations, the dispersion relation of modulated CPEM-EC wave in a collisional plasma has been derived. It is found that this wave is unstable in such a plasma system and the growth rate of the associated instability depends on various parameters such as electron Fermi temperature, plasma number density, collision frequency, and modulation wavenumber. It is shown that while the increase of collision frequency leads to increase of the growth rate of instability, especially at large wavenumber limit, the increase of plasma number density results in more stable modulated CPEM-EC wave. It is also found that in contrast to collisionless plasma in which modulational instability is restricted to small wavenumbers, in collisional plasma, the interval of instability occurrence can be extended to a large domain.