Introducing new version of a math symbol from another font

Question

I'm trying to use a "hack" to get around the fact that \mathsf doesn't apply to lower-case Greek letters in math mode, by using the CM Bright font instead. What I'd like to have is a command, for example, \alphasf, which calls the computer modern bright version of \alpha (which looks sort of sf-like).

To be clear, I do not want to change the behaviour of \mathsf itself, nor do I want \alpha to change. I also do not want to use CM Bright anywhere else.

I'm trying to do this by defining a new math font (I realize there's only 16 but I don't think I'm going to hit that limit), using \DeclareSymbolFont (as discussed here), and then using:

\DeclareMathOperator{\alphasf}{** something with new font ** \alpha}

For what it's worth, I'm also loading the amsmath packages.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

This does it for the \alpha and \beta, for example.

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{amsmath}
%\usepackage{cmbright}
\DeclareSymbolFont{CMB}{OML}{cmbrm}{m}{it}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\alphasf}{\mathalpha}{CMB}{11}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\betasf}{\mathalpha}{CMB}{12}
\begin{document}
\[
AB\alpha\alphasf\beta\betasf
\]
\end{document}