| Stars are born with protostellar discs that during the initial stages of their formation are relatively massive, asymmetric, and they are being fed with material infalling from their parent clouds. Such discs may become massive enough and fragment producing secondary low-mass objects: planets, brown dwarfs and low-mass stars. I will discuss the physics of disc fragmentation and review computational studies of fragmenting discs, focusing on how these compare with observed young discs and with the observed properties of brown dwarfs. I will also discuss the possible similarities between the formation of brown dwarfs and gas giant planets. |
