  We investigate a paradigmatic model for quantum transport with both
nearest-neighbor and infinite range hopping coupling (independent of the
position). Due to long range homogeneous hopping, a gap between the ground
state and the excited states can be induced, which is mathematically equivalent
to the superconducting gap. In the gapped regime, the dynamics within the
excited states subspace is shielded from long range hopping, namely it occurs
as if long range hopping would be absent. This is a cooperative phenomenon
since shielding is effective over a time scale which diverges with the system
size. We named this effect {\it Cooperative Shielding}. We also discuss the
consequences of our findings on Anderson localization. Long range hopping is
usually thought to destroy localization due to the fact that it induces an
infinite number of resonances. Contrary to this common lore we show that the
excited states display strong localized features when shielding is effective
even in the regime of strong long range coupling. A brief discussion on the
extension of our results to generic power-law decaying long range hopping is
also given. Our preliminary results confirms that the effects found for the
infinite range case are generic.
