Galactic chemical evolution in hierarchical formation models - II. The
  Intracluster Medium
  We use the cosmological semi-analytic model (SAM) for galaxy formation
presented in Paper I to study the metallicities and abundance ratios of the
intracluster medium (ICM) within the hierarchical structure formation paradigm.
By requiring a slightly flat IMF (x=1.15) and a two-population
delay-time-distribution (DTD) for SN Ia explosions we found previously that
this model is able to reproduce the abundance ratios and supernova rates of
early-type galaxies in the local Universe. Predictions for elemental abundances
in the ICM pose a further test of the model. We find that with the fiducial
model from Paper I the overall metal content of the ICM is too low, although
the abundance ratios are in good agreement with the data. However, we find that
allowing a fraction of the metal-enriched material ejected by stars to be
deposited directly into the hot ICM, instead of being deposited into the cold
ISM, appears to be a plausible and physically-motivated solution.
