  Context: the space-borne missions CoRoT and Kepler have provided photometric
observations of unprecedented quality. The study of solar-like oscillations
observed in red giant stars by these satellites allows a better understanding
of the different physical processes occurring in their interiors. In
particular, the study of the mode excitation and damping is a promising way to
improve our understanding of stellar physics that has, so far, been performed
only on a limited number of targets. Aims: the recent asteroseismic
characterization of the evolutionary status for a large number of red giants
allows us to study the physical processes acting in the interior of red giants
and how they are modify during stellar evolution. In this work, we aim to
obtain information on the excitation and damping of pressure modes through the
measurement of the stars' pressure mode widths and amplitudes and to analyze
how they are modified with stellar evolution. The objective is to bring
observational constraints on the modeling of the physical processes behind mode
excitation and damping. Methods: we fit the frequency spectra of red giants
with well defined evolutionary status using Lorentzians functions to derive the
pressure mode widths and amplitudes. To strengthen our conclusions, we used two
different fitting techniques. Results: pressure mode widths and amplitudes were
determined for more than 5000 red giants. With a stellar sample two orders of
magnitude larger than previous results, we confirmed that the mode width
depends on stellar evolution and varies with stellar effective temperature. In
addition, we discovered that the mode width depends on stellar mass. We also
confirmed observationally the influence of the stellar metallicity on the mode
amplitudes, as predicted by models.
