Faint Tidal Features in Galaxies within the Canada-France-Hawaii
  Telescope Legacy Survey Wide Fields
  We present an analysis of the detectability of faint tidal features in
galaxies from the wide-field component of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope
Legacy Survey. Our sample consists of 1781 luminous M_r<-19.3 mag) galaxies in
the magnitude range 15.5<r<17 mag and in the redshift range 0.04<z<0.2.
Although we have classified tidal features according to their morphology (e.g.
streams, shells and tails), we do not attempt to interpret them in terms of
their physical origin (e.g. major versus minor merger debris). Instead, we
provide a catalog that is intended to provide raw material for future
investigations which probe the nature of low surface brightness substructure
around galaxies. We find that around 12% of the galaxies in our sample show
clear tidal features at the highest confidence level. This fraction rises to
about 18% if we include systems with convincing albeit weaker tidal features,
and to 26% if we include systems with more marginal features that may or may
not be tidal in origin. These proportions are a strong function of rest-frame
colour and of stellar mass. Linear features, shells, and fans are much more
likely to occur in massive galaxies with stellar masses >10^10.5 M_sun, and red
galaxies are twice as likely to show tidal features than are blue galaxies.
