Josephson junctions defined in strong spin orbit semiconductors are highly interesting for the search for topological systems. However, next to topological edge states that emerge in a sufficient magnetic field, trivial edge states can also occur. We study the trivial edge states with superconducting quantum interference measurements on nontopological InAs Josephson junctions. We observe a SQUID pattern, an indication of superconducting edge transport. Also, a remarkable h/e SQUID signal is observed that, as we find, stems from crossed Andreev states.

Junctions created by coupling two superconductors via a semiconductor nanowire in the presence of high magnetic fields are the basis for the potential detection, fusion, and braiding of Majorana bound states. We study NbTiN/InSb nanowire/NbTiN Josephson junctions and find that the dependence of the critical current on the magnetic field exhibits gate-tunable nodes. This is in contrast with a well-known Fraunhofer effect, under which critical current nodes form a regular pattern with a period fixed by the junction area. Based on a realistic numerical model we conclude that the Zeeman effect induced by the magnetic field and the spin-orbit interaction in the nanowire are insufficient to explain the observed evolution of the Josephson effect. We find the interference between the few occupied one-dimensional modes in the nanowire to be the dominant mechanism responsible for the critical current behavior. We also report a strong suppression of critical currents at finite magnetic fields that should be taken into account when designing circuits based on Majorana bound states.

The critical current of a Josephson junction is an oscillatory function of the enclosed magnetic flux Φ, because of quantum interference modulated with periodicity h/2e. We calculate these Fraunhofer oscillations in a two-dimensional (2D) ballistic superconductor-normal-metal-superconductor (SNS) junction. For a Fermi circle the amplitude of the oscillations decays as 1/Φ or faster. If the Fermi circle is strongly warped, as it is on a square lattice near the band center, we find that the amplitude decays slower, 1/Φ, when the magnetic length lm=/eB drops below the separation L of the NS interfaces. The crossover to the slow decay of the critical current is accompanied by the appearance of a 2D array of current vortices and antivortices in the normal region, which form a bipartite rectangular lattice with lattice constant ≃lm2/L. The 2D lattice vanishes for a circular Fermi surface, when only the usual single row of Josephson vortices remains.