  alpha-nucleus potentials are one important ingredient for the understanding
of the nucleosynthesis of heavy neutron-deficient p nuclei in the astrophysical
gamma-process where these p nuclei are produced by a series of (gamma,n),
(gamma,p), and (gamma,alpha) reactions. I present an improved alpha-nucleus
potential at the astrophysically relevant sub-Coulomb energies which is derived
from the analysis of alpha decay data and from a previously established
systematic behavior of double-folding potentials.
