  The Fringe Sensor Unit (FSU) is the central element of the Phase Referenced
Imaging and Micro-arcsecond Astrometry (PRIMA) dual-feed facility and provides
fringe sensing for all observation modes, comprising off-axis fringe tracking,
phase referenced imaging, and high-accuracy narrow-angle astrometry. It is
installed at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) and successfully
servoed the fringe tracking loop during the initial commissioning phase. Unique
among interferometric beam combiners, the FSU uses spatial phase modulation in
bulk optics to retrieve real-time estimates of fringe phase after spatial
filtering. A R=20 spectrometer across the K-band makes the retrieval of the
group delay signal possible. The FSU was integrated and aligned at the VLTI in
summer 2008. It yields phase and group delay measurements at sampling rates up
to 2 kHz, which are used to drive the fringe tracking control loop. During the
first commissioning runs, the FSU was used to track the fringes of stars with
K-band magnitudes as faint as m_K=9.0, using two VLTI Auxiliary Telescopes (AT)
and baselines of up to 96 m. Fringe tracking using two Very Large Telescope
(VLT) Unit Telescopes (UT) was demonstrated. During initial commissioning and
combining stellar light with two ATs, the FSU showed its ability to improve the
VLTI sensitivity in K-band by more than one magnitude towards fainter objects,
which is of fundamental importance to achieve the scientific objectives of
PRIMA.
