Realistic Oscillon Interactions

Oscillons are long-lived nonlinear pseudo-solitonic configurations of scalar fields and many plausible inflationary scenarios predict an oscillon-dominated phase in the early universe. Many possible aspects of this phase remain unexplored, particularly oscillon-oscillon interactions and interactions between oscillons and their environment. However the primary long range forces between oscillons are gravitational and thus slow-acting relative to the intrinsic timescales of the oscillons themselves. Given that simulations with local gravity are computationally expensive we explore these effects by extracting individual specimens from simulations and then engineering interactions. We find that oscillons experience friction when moving in an inhomogeneous background and, because oscillons in non-relativistic collisions bounce or merge as a function of their relative phases, the outcomes of interactions between ``wild'' oscillons depend on their specific trajectories.