Stationary states. Inside the infinite square well, the time-independent Schrödinger equation has sinusoidal solutions. The boundary conditions select ; normalization then gives
Each wavefunction vanishes outside the well. There is no nonzero state.
Immediate energy measurement after expansion. For the one-sided sudden expansion of an infinite square well, take the original wall at as fixed, so the expanded well occupies . In the sudden approximation, the initial wavefunction remains on , extended by zero elsewhere. The new ground state is . Its probability amplitude is
The Born rule therefore gives
The motion of the walls matters: a symmetric expansion about the old midpoint would instead give . The stated width alone does not explicitly identify the final endpoints. The first result uses the natural continuation of the specified left boundary; if both boundaries are moved, the final location must be supplied. For a new well containing , the overlap is .
Evolution of one energy eigenstate. For a time-independent Hamiltonian operator, write . Substitution into the Time-dependent Schrödinger equation gives , so
Only a global phase changes, leaving all measurement probabilities unchanged.
Delayed energy measurement. Expand the unchanged initial state in the complete new energy eigenbasis,
For the fixed-left-wall geometry, direct overlap integration gives
orthogonality isolates the new ground-state amplitude as . Its phase cancels on squaring, so the ground-state probability remains for every delay, provided the expanded well remains fixed and no intervening measurement or environment changes the state. The position probability density generally evolves because different eigenstates acquire different relative phases.