Excited states have been identified for the first time in very neutron deficient Pt-171.172 nuclei using the recoil-or-decay tagging technique. The ground-state band in Pt-172 has been established up to I-pi = 8+. A similar level sequence, presumably built on the I-pi = 13/2(+) state, is observed for Pt-171. The data are compared with theoretical calculations based on the mean field approach and the random phase approximation and are put into the context of the systematics of platinum isotopes. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
