We present a high-resolution smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation of the Antennae galaxies ( NGC 4038/4039 ) and follow the evolution 3 Gyrs beyond the final coalescence .
The simulation includes metallicity dependent cooling , star formation , and both stellar feedback and chemical enrichment .
The simulated best-match Antennae reproduces well both the observed morphology and the off-nuclear starburst .
We also produce for the first time a simulated two-dimensional metallicity map of the Antennae and find good agreement with the observed metallicity of off-nuclear stellar clusters , however the nuclear metallicities are overproduced by \sim 0.5 dex .
Using the radiative transfer code SKIRT we produce multi-wavelength observations of both the Antennae and the merger remnant .
The 1 Gyr old remnant is well fitted with a Sérsic profile of n = 7.07 , and with an r -band effective radius of r _ { e } = 1.6 kpc and velocity dispersion of \sigma _ { e } = 180 km / s the remnant is located on the fundamental plane of early-type galaxies ( ETGs ) .
The initially blue Antennae remnant evolves onto the red sequence after \sim 2.5 Gyr of secular evolution .
The remnant would be classified as a fast rotator , as the specific angular momentum evolves from \lambda _ { Re } \approx 0.11 to \lambda _ { Re } \approx 0.14 during its evolution .
The remnant shows ordered rotation and a double peaked maximum in the mean 2D line-of-sight velocity .
These kinematical features are relatively common among local ETGs and we specifically identify three local ETGs ( NGC 3226 , NGC 3379 and NGC 4494 ) in the ATLAS ^ { \mathrm { 3 D } } sample , whose photometric and kinematic properties most resemble the Antennae remnant .