One of the outstanding problems in contemporary star formation is the origin of brown dwarfs (BDs). As is often the case with classic problems in astronomy, two leading opposing pictures have emerged to explain their origin : disk fragmentation, and turbulent fragmentation. In this talk, we will briefly summarize exciting recent observations of BD systems. As we will discuss, while observations are beginning to favor turbulent fragmentation over disk fragmentation, virtually all numerical simulations performed to date support the disk fragmentation hypothesis.
In this talk, we will discuss extensive new numerical results performed with both SPH and AMR which clarify and help bridge the gap between observations and numerical simulations.
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