2022ApJ...932..122H

TMC-1A is a protostellar source harboring a young protostar, IRAS 04365+2353, and shows highly asymmetric features of a few 100 au scale in its molecular emission lines. Blueshifted emission is much stronger in the CS (J = 5-4) line than redshifted emission. This asymmetry can be explained if the gas accretion is episodic and takes the form of cloudlet capture, given that the cloudlet is approaching toward us. The gravity of the protostar transforms the cloudlet into a stream and changes its velocity along the flow. The emission from the cloudlet should be blueshifted before the periastron, while it should be redshifted after the periastron. If a major part of cloudlet has not reached the periastron, the former should be dominant. We perform hydrodynamical simulations to examine the validity of the scenario. Our numerical simulations can reproduce the observed asymmetry if the orbit of the cloudlet is inclined to the disk plane. The inclination can explain the slow infall velocity observed in the C¹⁸O (J = 2-1) line emission. Such episodic accretion may occur in various protostellar cores since actual clouds could have inhomogeneous density distributions. We also discuss the implication of the cloudlet capture on observations of related objects.