Question

that is I’d like $\mathcal{l}=\mathcal{L}$ to produce two letters. I know \mathcal{} works (predictably) on upper case letters only. Thanks.

Answer 1

Try the following (in your preamble):

\DeclareFontFamily{OT1}{pzc}{}
\DeclareFontShape{OT1}{pzc}{m}{it}{<-> s * [1.10] pzcmi7t}{}
\DeclareMathAlphabet{\mathpzc}{OT1}{pzc}{m}{it}

Then $\mathpzc{l}=\mathcal{L}$ should work. Note that $\mathpzc{L}$ is not the same as $\mathcal{L}$.

The scaling is designed to make the \mathpzc font about the same size as the \mathcal font.

This is using Zapf Chancery which is the standard PostScript calligraphic font.