Breaks in the Radial Oxygen Abundance and Corotation Radius of Three Spiral Galaxies

TL;DR

This study investigates the relationship between metallicity distribution breaks and the corotation radius in three spiral galaxies, using photometric and spectroscopic data to analyze oxygen abundance gradients.

Contribution

It provides new observational evidence linking metallicity gradient variations to the corotation radius in spiral galaxies, supporting chemo-dynamical models.

Findings

Confirmed variations in metallicity gradients possibly correlated with corotation.

Identified reliable galactocentric distances and oxygen abundances in selected galaxies.

Supported the hypothesis of metallicity breaks related to spiral arm dynamics.

Abstract

The correlation between the breaks in the metallicity distribution and the corotation radius of spiral galaxies has been already advocated in the past and is predicted by a chemo-dynamical model of our Galaxy that effectively introduces the role of spiral arms in the star formation rate. In this work we present photometric and spectroscopic observations made with the Gemini Telescope for three of the best candidates of spiral galaxies to have the corotation inside the optical disk: IC0167, NGC1042 and NGC6907. We observed the most intense and well distributed \hii regions of these galaxies, deriving reliable galactocentric distances and Oxygen abundances by applying different statistical methods. From these results we confirm the presence of variations in the gradients of metallicity of these galaxies that are possibly correlated with the corotation resonance.