The hadron-quark phase transition in quantum chromodyanmics has been suggested as an alternative explosion mechanism for core-collapse supernovae. We study the impact of three different hadron-quark equations of state (EoS) with first-order (DD2F\_SF, STOS-B145) and second-order (CMF) phase transitions on supernova dynamics by performing 97 simulations for solar- and zero-metallicity progenitors in the range of $14\texttt{ -}100\,\text{ M}_\odot$. We find explosions only for two low-compactness models ($14 \text{ M}_\odot$ and $16\,\text{ M}_\odot$) with the DD2F\_SF EoS, both with low explosion energies of $\mathord{ \sim}10^{ 50}\,\mathrm{ erg}$. These weak explosions are characterised by a neutrino signal with several mini-bursts in the explosion phase due to complex reverse shock dynamics, in addition to the typical second neutrino burst for phase-transition driven explosions. The nucleosynthesis shows significant overproduction of nuclei such as $^{ 90}\mathrm{ Zr}$ for the $14\,\text{ M}_\odot$ zero-metallicity model and $^{ 94}\mathrm{ Zr}$ for the $16\,\text{ M}_\odot$ solar-metallicity model, but the overproduction factors are not large enough to place constraints on the occurrence of such explosions. Several other low-compactness models using the DD2F\_SF EoS and two high-compactness models using the STOS EoS end up as failed explosions and emit a second neutrino burst. For the CMF EoS, the phase transition never leads to a second bounce and explosion. For all three EoS, inverted convection occurs deep in the core of the proto-compact star due to anomalous behaviour of thermodynamic derivatives in the mixed phase, which heats the core to entropies up to $4k_\text{ B}/\text{ baryon}$ and may have a distinctive gravitational wave signature, also for a second-order phase transition.
Categories: astro-ph.HE astro-ph.SR nucl-th