Creation and annihilation operators can act on states of various types of particles. For example, in quantum chemistry and many-body theory the creation and annihilation operators often act on electron states. They can also refer specifically to the ladder operators for the quantum harmonic oscillator. In the latter case, the creation operator is interpreted as a raising operator, adding a quantum of energy to the oscillator system (similarly for the lowering operator). They can be used to represent phonons. Constructing Hamiltonians using these operators has the advantage that the theory automatically satisfies the cluster decomposition theorem.