Supercurrent peaks in planar high-temperature superconducting Josephson junctions

We investigate the current-voltage $(\mathrm{IV})$ 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 $\mathrm{IV}$ 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.