Complex-potential description of the damped harmonic oscillator

Multidimensional damped harmonic oscillator is treated by means of a non-selfadjoint Hamiltonian with complex potential. The latter is chosen as V(x)=xx(A-iW)x with positive matrices A, W, By a perturbation-theory argument, the corresponding Hamiltonian H=-1/2Δ+V with the natural domain is shown to be closed and such that Vsub(t)=exp(-iHt) is a continuous contractive semigroup. Explicit integral-operator form of Vsub(t) is found by use of Lie-Trotter formula