The quantum jump method is an approach which is much like the master-equation treatment except that it operates on the wave function rather than using a density matrix approach. The main component of this method is evolving the system's wave function in time with a pseudo-Hamiltonian; where at each time step, a quantum jump (discontinuous change) may take place with some probability. The calculated system state as a function of time is known as a quantum trajectory, and the desired density matrix as a function of time may be calculated by averaging over many simulated trajectories. For a Hilbert space of dimension N, the number of wave function components is equal to N while the number of density matrix components is equal to N. Consequently, for certain problems the quantum jump method offers a performance advantage over direct master-equation approaches.