We present all the possible solutions of a Josephson junction with bias
current and magnetic field with both inline and overlap geometry, and examine
their stability. We follow the bifurcation of new solutions as we increase the
junction length. The analytical results, in terms of elliptic functions in the
case of inline geometry, are in agreement with the numerical calculations and
explain the strong hysteretic phenomena typically seen in the calculation of
the maximum tunneling current. This suggests a different experimental approach
based on the use, instead of the external magnetic field the modulus of the
elliptic function or the related quantity the total magnetic flux to avoid
hysteretic behavior and unfold the overlapping Imax(H) curves.Comment: 36 pages with 17 figure