On the nature of spiral arms in the interacting galaxy M51

In this study, we investigated the radial variation of the azimuthal propagation of star formation across the spiral arms in the nearby galaxy NGC 5194 (M51a) by analysing the spatial separation between young star clusters and their nearest HII regions. The significant differences in the radial profiles of the mean azimuthal offsets in the M51a arms were found when the southern and northern arms were studied separately. The northern arm analysis showed that its radial profile is consistent with the predictions of stationary density wave theory for trailing spirals, while the explanation of the radial profile for the southern arm required its pattern speed to be higher than the rotation velocity of disc matter within the corotation circle, and lower than that outside of it. At the same time, these different radial profiles of the mean azimuthal offset in the two arms are joined by a common localization of corotation resonances, confirmed by independent studies using different methods.