  The issue of thermalization in open quantum systems is explored from the
perspective of fermion models with quadratic couplings and linear baths. Both
the thermodynamic state and the stationary solution of the Lindblad equation
are rendered as a matrix-product sequence following a reformulation in terms of
underlying algebras, allowing to characterize a family of stationary solutions
and determine the cases where they correspond to thermal states. This
characterization provides insight into the operational mechanisms that lead the
system to thermalization and their interplay with mechanisms that tend to drive
it out of thermal equilibrium.

Quantum Physics