Sensitive visible interferometry with PAVO

The Precision Astronomical Visible Observations (PAVO) beam combiner is a new concept in visible beam combination, recently commissioned at the CHARA array. By creating spatially-modulated fringes in a pupil plane and then dispersing with an integral field unit, PAVO utilizes the full multi-r0 aperture of the CHARA array over a standard 50% (630-950nm) bandwidth. In addition, minimal optimized spatial filtering ensures calibration that is in principle as good as using single-mode fibers. We describe the design of and initial results from the PAVO instrument.