Fusion and large cardinal preservation

In this paper we introduce some fusion properties of forcing notions which guarantee that an iteration with supports of size ⩽κ not only does not collapse κ+ but also preserves the strength of κ (after a suitable preparatory forcing). This provides a general theory covering the known cases of tree iterations which preserve large cardinals (cf. Dobrinen and Friedman (2010) [3], Friedman and Halilović (2011) [5], Friedman and Honzik (2008) [6], Friedman and Magidor (2009) [8], Friedman and Zdomskyy (2010) [10], Honzik (2010) [12]).