The excitation and damping of solar oscillations (Invited Review)

I review the present status of our understanding of the excitation and damping of solar p-mode oscillations. While a few simple statements can be made about the expected properties of p-modes, there is currently no complete theory which explains the observed mode amplitudes and linewidths. I discuss below the growing evidence that the p-modes cannot be overstable and therefore self-excited, but are instead probably stochastically excited by turbulent convection. I discuss the present status of the latter model for exciting p-modes, and some possible future directions