The low-mass end of the IMF

Abstract

The rapid advances in infrared detector technology over the past decades have impelled the development of wide-field instruments, and shaped our view of the cold universe. Large scale surveys in our Galaxy have discovered hundreds of brown dwarfs enabling the characterisation of the mass function in the substellar regime. I will review the most recent observational results concerning the substellar IMF derived in star forming regions, open clusters, and the field, that must be reproduced and explained by any successful star formation theory.