Equilibration implies asymptotic stationarity for open quantum systems

We use the exact Nakajima–Zwanzig form of the master equation to show that open quantum systems which exhibit equilibration (or thermalization) by evolving to a time independent asymptotic state, have under certain conditions a reduced density matrix for the system which commutes with the effective system Hamiltonian. We also show that if the initial system–bath density matrix is of product form then the asymptotic reduced density matrix of the system depends only on the diagonal elements of the initial system density matrix in the eigenbasis of the effective Hamiltonian.