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Spiral arms are the most characteristic features of disc galaxies, easilydistinguishable due to their association with ongoing star formation. However,the role of spiral structure in the chemical evolution of galaxies is unclear.Here we explore gas-phase abundance variations between arm and interarm regionsfor a sample of 45 spiral galaxies using high spatial resolution VLT/MUSEIntegral Field Spectroscopy data. We report the presence of more metal-rich HIIregions in the spiral arms with respect to the corresponding interarm regionsfor a large subsample of galaxies ($45-65\%$ depending on the adoptedcalibrator for the abundance derivation). A small percentage of the sample isobserved to display the opposite trend, that is, more metal-poor HII regions inthe spiral arms compared to that of the interarms ($5-20\%$ depending on thecalibrator). We investigate the dependence of the variations with three galaxyproperties: the stellar mass, the presence of bars, and the flocculent/granddesign appearance of spiral arms. In all cases, we observe that thearm-interarm abundance differences are larger (positive) in more massive andgrand-design galaxies. This is confirmed by an analogous spaxel-wise analysis,which also shows a noticeable effect of the presence of galactic bars, withbarred systems presenting larger (positive) arm-interarm abundance variationsthan unbarred systems. The comparison of our results with new predictions fromtheoretical models exploring the nature of the spirals would highly impact onour knowledge on how these structures form and affect their host galaxies.

Arm-interarm gas abundance variations explored with MUSE: the role of spiral structure in the chemical enrichment of galaxies