Wide Josephson Junction on InAs quantum well: missing Shapiro steps in non-topological regime*

Josephson junctions hosting Majorana fermions have been predicted to exhibit a 4π periodic current phase relation. One experimental consequence of this periodicity is the disappearance of odd steps in Shapiro steps experiments. Experimentally, missing odd Shapiro steps have been observed in a number of materials systems with strong spin-orbit coupling and have been interpreted in the context of topological super-conductivity. Here we report on missing odd steps in topologically trivial Josephson junctions fabricated on InAs quantum wells. We ascribe our observations to the high transparency of our junctions allowing Landau-Zener transitions and the existence of long junctions modes well isolated from the continuum. We analyze our results using a bi-modal transparency distribution which demonstrates that only few modes carrying 4π periodic current are sufficient to describe the disappearance of odd steps. Furthermore we show that the probability of Landau-Zener is shown is independent of the drive frequency. Our findings highlight the elaborate circumstances that have to be considered in the investigation of the 4π Josephson junctions in relationship to topological superconductivity.