In the present paper we present part of the results obtained in the study of above-yrast states in 145 Sm using the 142 Nd(α,Xnγ) reaction. γ-γ, angular distribution, polarization, and excitation function measurements were performed. All multiplet members of the 3 − ⊗ νf 7 2 and the 2 + ⊗ νf 7 2 multiplets have been observed. The unperturbed energies for the 2 + ⊗ νf 7 2 multiplet have been estimated using the extensive information existing on one neutron transfer reactions. The results are compared with the 143 Nd case. The similarity is remarkable.PACS: 27.60.+j; 21.10.Re Nuclei in the neighbourhood of spherical nuclei are specially suited to perform studies of particle core-excitation couplings since very often the low-lying states in the core are well isolated. The difficult part from the experimental point of view is to find the appropriate reaction to populate all members of the multiplet. In a first approximation, they are not supposed to be excited in transfer reactions. It might happen however that the particle-core coupled states mix with other states with the same spin and parity, but with high spectroscopic factor, like for instance single particle excitations. In this case core-coupled states can be observed in one-nucleon transfer reactions. But in general, it is difficult to detect all states by this method due to the lack of appropriate close-lying states to mix with.A very attractive idea is to use a reaction like fusionevaporation, which is not structure selective. If a reaction with light ions is combined with an enough sensitive detection system, it is possible to populate and observe all states in a given range of spin and energy. These kind of measurements are also important because they provide information about the total number of states in the region of interest, and consequently an idea about other possible mixings.The nucleus 145 Sm is a very interesting case to perform this kind of studies since there is a vast information arising from one-nucleon transfer reactions with light projectiles. There are several works published on stripping reactions results [1, 2]. Pick-up reactions became possible recently [3,4] with the construction of the radioactive target 146 Sm.In the present work we have made an effort to study above yrast states in 145 Sm. The reaction and energy was chosen to populate states in the range of spin and energy where the 2 + ⊗ νf 7 2 and the 3 − ⊗ νf 7 2 multiplets are expected. Since anyhow the above yrast states are always weakly populated in comparison with yrast states, the use of a compton suppressed multidetector array was essential in this case. Since the gamma multiplicity was expected to be low, and the recoil velocity small, we could use a setup where the Ge detectors were relatively close to the target.The experiments were carried out at the 12 MV Tandem accelerator at the University of Cologne. In a first run a detailed excitation function measurement was done for alpha energies ranging from 20 to 28 MeV in 0.4 MeV steps on a 93.5% enriched 142 Nd target. C...