Hi!
I guess what you want to calculate is the occupation photons of a qubit(2-level system) and a resonator connected to it. (known as JC model, which you can find explanation here and there).
The expectation value you input into the program is sigma+sigma- and sigma-sigma+. The first one means the occupation photons of qubit, and the second implies the photons leaked from qubit to any elsewhere.
You may want to calculate a.dagger*a for the replacement.
You may check the tutorial notebooks of qutip, one of them there shows the calculation of JC model. Or you may check this very well-structured notebook: