 Spin-raising and lowering operators

On a spin-$s$ field $f$, the spin-raising and lowering operations are $ðf=-{\sin }^s\theta ({\partial }_{\theta }+i\csc \theta {\partial }_{\phi })({\sin }^{-s}\theta f)$ and $\overline{ð}f=-{\sin }^{-s}\theta ({\partial }_{\theta }-i\csc \theta {\partial }_{\phi })({\sin }^s\theta f)$. The intermediate spin changes after each application. For an axisymmetric scalar $f(\mu )$, either operation applied twice yields $(1-{\mu }^2)f^{\prime \prime }(\mu )$.