Supercurrent peaks in planar high-temperature superconducting Josephson junctions

We investigate the current-voltage (IV) characteristics of planar high-temperature superconducting Josephson junctions in the physically relevant overdamped limit. We show that the nonuniform bias current distribution induced by the planar geometry leads to unexpected modifications of the IV characteristic, including a resonancelike supercurrent peak that moves with applied magnetic field. We show that these are not resonance effects, but are due to a dynamical instability in the supercurrent distribution. All of the several bias distributions investigated result in the field-dependent supercurrent peaks.