12:34 AM
@imbAF When the RHS is zero or one, the square is equal to the square root.
@imbAF you misunderstand what is happening. If you are finding a basis, it is convenient to have orthonormal bases, so we will want to impose the condition that basis vectors be of unit length. That is one application of that integral. Each basis vector in QM is a particular quantum state, and each of them needs to be normalisable to unity. A different notion is that a general quantum state must also be normalisable; it is this one that, if you did not consider enough basis vectors, then
it can fail to be normalised.
It is this, that "less than the total amount of possible states, then it can happen that the probability is less than one" could apply.