Thanks Oivind,

This time, the "expand" command worked to the extent that it did do a n expansion, BUT

now the creation-annihilation operators are being treated as a mixture of algebraic variables and operators. Maple seems to have been made "smart" so the creation operators are placed on the left of the annihilation operators, which Maple should not be doing (this is incorrect).

Any suggestions how to circumvent this are appreciated. I suspect this means NOT using Maple's creation-annihilation operators, but writing my own "operators" with certain properties which will prevent Maple from rearranging the order of the operators by itself.