In this thesis we study the properties of time-dependent, nontopological configurations and their effect on the macroscopic properties of a system described by a nonlinear field theory. These structures seem to be ubiquitous in relativistic field theories with symmetry breaking scenarios and since they drastically change the power spectrum, understanding their properties and lifetimes is essential for characterization of the equilibration time scales of a given system.

To understand the mechanisms of their creation we rely on large scale computations to solve the fully nonlinear equations of motion. By using both Langevin thermalization techniques and various ansatz we find information about both the individual formation and stability properties of these structures and their effect on global observables such as the decay rate of a metastable vacuum. Each of these aspects contains surprises and radical departures from the linearized theories. We also show examples of how these structures can be examined in momentum space from computing several correlation functions.

We extend 2d results on the effect of these emergent structures to the decay rate of a false vacuum to 3d and confirm that these time-dependent structures modify the decay, after a quench, to a power law in pure scalar theories. Adding gauge fields, we present new time dependent nontopological solutions in the 2d Abelian Higgs model which show the creation of oscillons from vortex antivortex annihilations. A phase transition in configuration space is then constructed from the stability properties of these oscillons in parameter space. Similarly, in 3 d we show that oscillons may be formed through toroidal ux-tube annihilations.

Finally, these properties are shown to also apply to more complex situations, such as the condensed proton-neutron system, which exhibits all the previous oscillon results as well as a new nontrivial vortex-vortex bound state.