abstract: Two kinds of cooperative effects are discussed for qubits interacting with an off-resonance electromagnetic cavity, both of them concerning the Dicke super-radiance. The first is a static, critical phenomenon: the so called super-radiant phase transition, occurring when a large number of qubits is coupled to a single cavity mode giving rise to a quantum phase transition for a critical value of the interaction strength. The second is a dynamic phenomenon, producing (among other effects) the generation andor preservation of entanglement between qubits even in the presence of cavity losses.