The lottery preparation (Q1964017)

The `lottery preparation' from the title is a general iteration scheme where at opportune stages one forces with the disjoint sum of a suitable family of posets; the generic filter on the final limit will pick one of these posets `at random'; this explains the term lottery. The preparation refers to the possibility of making large cardinal properties indestructible by certain forcings. One could simple-mindedly try to prove Laver's indestructibility theorem for supercompact~\(\kappa\) as follows: set up an iteration~\(\langle\mathbb{P}_\alpha:\alpha<\kappa\rangle\) where at every inaccessible~\(\lambda\) below~\(\kappa\) one holds a lottery among all \(\lambda\)-directed closed posets. In proving that \(\kappa\)~is still supercompact after forcing with this iteration \textit{and} one more \(\kappa\)-directed closed poset~\(\mathbb{P}\) one would then pull \(\mathbb{P}\) out of the hat at stage~\(\kappa\) in the iteration \(j\bigl(\langle\mathbb{P}_\alpha:\alpha<\kappa\rangle\bigr)\), where \(j\)~is a suitable elementary embedding. The author shows how, with the aid of Woodin's fast function forcing, this idea can be made to work for a host of large cardinals thus obtaining many indestructibility results for them.