How can hydrogen have a cation if its literally just a proton?

Question

After losing its electron is there still something identifying it as hydrogen? Are all lone protons just hydrogen cations?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

It’s a matter of context. You might call an H+ ion a “hydrogen cation” in chemistry, when you’re interested in how it combines with an anion, but if you’re doing particle physics and you have some protons in a particle accelerator beam, you’d probably just call those “protons”.

It’s like how a “beta particle” is just an electron, but you call it a “beta particle” when it’s being emitted from a radioactive nucleus. In chemistry, you just call it an electron.