Spaces of coinvariants and fusion product I. From equivalence theorem to Kostka polynomials

The fusion rule gives the dimensions of spaces of conformal blocks in the WZW theory. We prove a dimension formula similar to the fusion rulefor spaces of coinvariants of affine Lie algebras g^. An equivalence of filtered spaces is established between spaces of coinvariants of two objects: highest weight g^-modules and tensor products of finite-dimensional evaluation representations of g\otimes\C[t]. In the sl_2 case we prove that their associated graded spaces are isomorphic to the spaces of coinvariants of fusion products, and that their Hilbert polynomials are the level-restricted Kostka polynomials.