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Taking advantage of the recent Gaia Data Release 3 (DR3), we map chemicalinhomogeneities in the Milky Way's disc out to a distance of $\sim$ 4 kpc fromthe Sun, using different samples of bright giant stars. The samples areselected using effective temperatures and surface gravities from the GSP-Specmodule, and are expected to trace stellar populations of different typical age.The cool (old) giants exhibit a relatively smooth radial metallicity gradientwith an azimuthal dependence. Binning in Galactic azimuth $\phi$, the slopegradually varies from $d$[M/H]$/dR \sim -0.054$ dex kpc$^{-1}$ at $\phi \sim-20^{\circ}$ to $\sim -0.035$ dex kpc$^{-1}$ at $\phi \sim 20^{\circ}$. On theother hand, the relatively hotter (and younger) stars present remarkableinhomogeneities, apparent as three (possibly four) metal-rich elongatedfeatures in correspondence of the spiral arms' locations in the Galactic disc.When projected onto Galactic radius, those features manifest themselves asstatistically significant bumps on top of the observed radial metallicitygradients with amplitudes up to $ \sim 0.05-0.1$ dex, making the assumption ofa linear radial decrease not applicable to this sample. The strong correlationbetween the spiral structure of the Galaxy and the observed chemical pattern inthe young sample indicates that the spiral arms might be at the origin for thedetected chemical inhomogeneities. In this scenario, the spiral arms wouldleave in the younger stars a strong signature, which progressively disappearswhen cooler (and older) giants are considered.

The chemical signature of the Galactic spiral arms revealed by Gaia DR3