Long-Lived Localized Field Configurations in Small Lattices: Application to Oscillons

Long-lived localized field configurations such as breathers, oscillons, or more complex objects naturally arise in the context of a wide range of nonlinear models in different numbers of spatial dimensions. We present a numerical method, which we call the {\it adiabatic damping method}, designed to study such configurations in small lattices. Using 3-dimensional oscillons in $\phi^4$ models as an example, we show that the method accurately (to a part in 10^5 or better) reproduces results obtained with static or dynamically expanding lattices, dramatically cutting down in integration time. We further present new results for 2-dimensional oscillons, whose lifetimes would be prohibitively long to study with conventional methods.