Kinematic footprint of the Milky Way spiral arms in Gaia EDR3

TL;DR

This study uses Gaia EDR3 stellar kinematics to map and analyze the Milky Way's spiral arms, revealing their complex, non-co-rotating, and clumpy nature through large-scale kinematic spirals and substructures.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed kinematic mapping of the Milky Way's spiral arms, showing their non-co-rotating, clumpy, and flocculent characteristics using Gaia data.

Findings

Identification of five large-scale kinematic spirals linked to spiral arms.

Detection of non-co-rotating, clumpy, and flocculent spiral structures.

Kinematic differences between arms and inter-arm regions.

Abstract

The Milky Way spiral arms are well established from star counts as well as from the locus of molecular clouds and other young objects, however, they have only recently started to be observed from a kinematics point of view. Using the kinematics of thin disc stars in Gaia EDR3 around the extended solar neighbourhood, we create x-y projections coloured by the radial, residual rotational, and vertical Galactocentric velocities ($U,\Delta V,W$). The maps are rich in substructures and reveal the perturbed state of the Galactic disc. We find that local differences between rotational velocity and the azimuthally averaged velocity, $\Delta V$, display at least five large-scale kinematic spirals; two of them closely follow the locus of the Sagittarius-Carina and Perseus spiral arms, with pitch angles of 9.12$^{\circ}$ and 7.76$^{\circ}$, and vertical thickness of $\sim400$ pc and $\sim600$ pc, respectively. Another kinematic spiral is located behind the Perseus arm and appears as a distortion in rotation velocities left by this massive arm but with no known counterpart in gas/stars overdensity. A weaker signal close to the Sun's position is present in our three velocity maps, and appears to be associated with the Local arm. Our analysis of the stellar velocities in the Galactic disc shows kinematic differences between arms and inter-arms, that are in favour of Milky Way spiral arms that do not corotate with the disc. Moreover, we show that the kinematic spirals are clumpy and flocculent, revealing the underlying nature of the Milky Way spiral arms.