Planar Al/InAs Josephson junctions (JJs) provide an attractive platform for topological superconductivity and fault-tolerant quantum computing. Surprisingly, we show that with a gate-tunable spin-orbit coupling (SOC), these JJs also support a much broader range of applications. The time-dependent SOC offers unexplored mechanisms for switching JJs, accompanied by the 2π-phase jumps and voltage pulses corresponding to single-flux-quantum transitions. In a constant applied magnetic field, with SOC, anharmonic current-phase relations, calculated microscopically in these JJs, yield a nonreciprocal transport and time-dependent superconducting diode effect. This supports a novel switching mechanism at no applied current bias and supporting fractional-flux-quantum superconducting circuits.
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