Lightly doped La2-xSrxCuO4 as a Lifshitz helimagnet -: art. no. 077004

We study the static magnetic correlations in lightly doped La2-xSrxCuO4 within the framework of a dipolar frustration model for a canted antiferromagnet. We show that the stability of the canted Neel state for x < 2% is due to the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya and XY anisotropies. For higher doping, the ground state is unstable towards a helicoidal magnetic phase, where the transverse components of the staggered magnetization rotate in a plane perpendicular to the orthorhombic b axis. Our theory reconciles, for the first time, the incommensurate peaks observed in elastic neutron scattering with Raman and magnetic susceptibility experiments in La2-xSrxCuO4.