Modeling stochastic excitation of acoustic modes in stars: present status and perspectives

Solar-like oscillations have now been detected for more than ten years and their frequencies measured for a still growing number of stars with various characteristics (e.g. mass, chemical composition, evolutionary stage ...). Excitation of such oscillations is attributed to turbu- lent convection and takes place in the uppermost part of the convective envelope. Since the pioneering work of Goldreich & Keely (1977), more sophisticated theoretical models of stochastic excitation were developed, which differ from each other both by the way turbulent convection is modeled and by the assumed sources of excitation. We briefly review here the different underlying approximations and assumptions of those models. A second part shows that computed mode excitation rates crucially depend on the way time-correlations between eddies are described but also on the surface metal abundance of the star.