The role of the corotation resonance in the secular evolution of disks of spiral galaxies

The corotation resonance plays an important role in the evolution of the disks of spiral galaxies, and in particular, of our Galaxy. Its effect on the chemical abundance gradients is even a tool to estimate the age of the present spiral arm structure, which we find to be long-lived, contrary to a recent common belief. The metallicity gradients usually decrease in the inner regions and become flat or rising at larger radii. In several galaxies, including the Milky Way, one observes not only a change in the slope of the abundance gradient, but also an abrupt step in metallicity at corotation. This step is because the corotation resonance separates the disk of a galaxy in two regions (inside corotation and outside corotation) which are isolated one from the other, so that the two sides evolve in an independent way. The barrier between the two regions is the result of the flow of gas in opposite directions on the two sides and by the ring-shaped void of gas observed at corotation. We investigated a sample of galaxies, which have a known corotation radius, and for which there are measurements of abundance gradients of Oxygen available in the literature. A very good correlation is found between corotation radii and the radii at which there is a break in the slope of the gradients. Besides this, an independent effect of corotation is a minimum of star formation associated with the minimum velocity at which the interstellar gas feeds the spiral arms (seen as potential wells and star-formation machines). Still another effect is the scattering of stars by the resonance, which causes their migration to different galactic radii.