We introduce and study oscillator topologies on paratopological groups and define certain related number invariants. As an application we prove that a Hausdorff paratopological group $G$ admits a weaker Hausdorff group topology provided $G$ is 3-oscillating. A paratopological group $G$ is 3-oscillating (resp. 2-oscillating) provided for any neighborhood $U$ of the unity $e$ of $G$ there is a neighborhood $Vsubset G$ of $e$ such that $V^{-1}VV^{-1}subset UU^{-1}U$ (resp. $V^{-1}Vsubset UU^{-1}$). The class of 2-oscillating paratopological groups includes all collapsing, all nilpotent paratopological groups, all paratopological groups satisfying a positive law, all paratopological SIN-group and all saturated paratopological groups (the latter means that for any nonempty open set $Usubset G$ the set $U^{-1}$ has nonempty interior). We prove that each totally bounded paratopological group $G$ is countably cellular; moreover, every cardinal of uncountable cofinality is a precaliber of $G$. Also we give an example of a saturated paratopological group which is not isomorphic to its mirror paratopological group as well as an example of a 2-oscillating paratopological group whose mirror paratopological group is not 2-oscillating.