We present the stellar velocity dispersion measurements for 5 Luminous Compact Galaxies (LCGs) at z=0.5-0.7. These galaxies are vigorously forming stars with average SFR $sim$ 40 M$_{odot}$/yr. We find that their velocity dispersions range from $sim1
37 rm{km/s}$ to $260 rm{km/s}$, while their stellar masses range between $4times 10^{9}$ and $10^{11}$ M$_{odot}$. If these LCGs evolve passively after this major burst of star formation, their masses and velocity dispersions, as well as their evolved colours and luminosities are most consistent with the values characteristic of early-type spiral galaxies today.
The ALHAMBRA survey aims to cover 4 square degrees using a system of 20 contiguous, equal width, medium-band filters spanning the range 3500 A to 9700 A plus the standard JHKs filters. Here we analyze deep near-IR number counts of one of our fields (
ALH08) for which we have a relatively large area (0.5 square degrees) and faint photometry (J=22.4, H=21.3 and K=20.0 at the 50% of recovery efficiency for point-like sources). We find that the logarithmic gradient of the galaxy counts undergoes a distinct change to a flatter slope in each band: from 0.44 at [17.0, 18.5] to 0.34 at [19.5, 22.0] for the J band; for the H band 0.46 at [15.5, 18.0] to 0.36 at [19.0, 21.0], and in Ks the change is from 0.53 in the range [15.0, 17.0] to 0.33 in the interval [18.0, 20.0]. These observations together with faint optical counts are used to constrain models that include density and luminosity evolution of the local type-dependent luminosity functions. Our models imply a decline in the space density of evolved early-type galaxies with increasing redshift, such that only 30% - 50% of the bulk of the present day red-ellipticals was already in place at z~1.
