First observation of excited states in {sup 172}Hg

Excited states in the extremely neutron-deficient isotope {sup 172}Hg have been established for the first time. The {sup 96}Ru({sup 78}Kr,2n) reaction was employed to populate excited states in {sup 172}Hg with a cross section {sigma}{approx_equal}15 nb. The highly selective recoil-decay tagging (RDT) technique was used to obtain clean in-beam {gamma}-ray spectra for {sup 172}Hg. The yrast ground-state band has tentatively been established up to I=6 ({Dirac_h}/2{pi}). The data have been interpreted within the framework of total Routhian surface and quasiparticle random phase approximation calculations.