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The morphology of the Milky Way is still a matter of debate. In order to shedlight on uncertainties surrounding the structure of the Galaxy, in this paper,we study the imprint of spiral arms on the distribution and properties of itsmolecular gas. To do so, we take full advantage of the SEDIGISM survey thatobserved a large area of the inner Galaxy in the $^{13}$CO(2-1) line at anangular resolution of 28". We analyse the influences of the spiral arms byconsidering the features of the molecular gas emission as a whole across thelongitude-velocity map built from the full survey. Additionally, we examine theproperties of the molecular clouds in the spiral arms compared to theproperties of their counterparts in the inter-arm regions. Through flux andluminosity probability distribution functions, we find that the molecular gasemission associated with the spiral arms does not differ significantly from theemission between the arms. On average, spiral arms show masses per unit lengthof $\sim10^5-10^6$ M$_{\odot} $kpc$^{-1}$. This is similar to values inferredfrom data sets in which emission distributions were segmented into molecularclouds. By examining the cloud distribution across the Galactic plane, we inferthat the molecular mass in the spiral arms is a factor of 1.5 higher than thatof the inter-arm medium, similar to what is found for other spiral galaxies inthe local Universe. We observe that only the distributions of cloud masssurface densities and aspect ratio in the spiral arms show significantdifferences compared to those of the inter-arm medium; other observeddifferences appear instead to be driven by a distance bias. By comparing ourresults with simulations and observations of nearby galaxies, we conclude thatthe measured quantities would classify the Milky Way as a flocculent spiralgalaxy, rather than as a grand-design one.

The SEDIGISM survey: The influence of spiral arms on the molecular gas distribution of the inner Milky Way