Oscillons are localized field configurations oscillating in time with lifetimes orders of magnitude longer than their oscillation period. In this paper, we simulate nontraveling oscillons produced by deforming the breather solutions of the sine-Gordon model. Such a deformation treats the dimensionality of the model as a real parameter to produce spherically symmetric oscillons. After considering the post-transient oscillation frequency as a control parameter, we probe the initial parameter space to continuously connect breathers and oscillons at various dimensionalities. For sufficiently small dimensional deformations, we find that oscillons can be treated as perturbatively deformed breathers. In $D\gtrsim 2$ spatial dimensions, we observe solutions undergoing intermittent phases of contraction and expansion in their cores. Knowing that stable and unstable configurations can be mapped to disjoint regions of the breather parameter space, we find that amplitude modulated solutions are located in the middle of both stability regimes. These solutions display the dynamics of critical behavior around the stability limit.

• Received 9 March 2023
• Revised 28 September 2023
• Accepted 23 October 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.108.096017

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Published by the American Physical Society