  A reasonable physical intuition in the study of interacting quantum systems
says that, independent of the initial state, the system will tend to
equilibrate. In this work we study a setting where relaxation to a steady state
is exact, namely for the Bose-Hubbard model where the system is quenched from a
Mott quantum phase to the strong superfluid regime. We find that the evolving
state locally relaxes to a steady state with maximum entropy constrained by
second moments, maximizing the entanglement, to a state which is different from
the thermal state of the new Hamiltonian. Remarkably, in the infinite system
limit this relaxation is true for all large times, and no time average is
necessary. For large but finite system size we give a time interval for which
the system locally "looks relaxed" up to a prescribed error. Our argument
includes a central limit theorem for harmonic systems and exploits the finite
speed of sound. Additionally, we show that for all periodic initial
configurations, reminiscent of charge density waves, the system relaxes
locally. We sketch experimentally accessible signatures in optical lattices as
well as implications for the foundations of quantum statistical mechanics.
