The convergence and optimality of adaptive mixed finite element methods for
the Poisson equation are established in this paper. The main difficulty for
mixed finite element methods is the lack of minimization principle and thus the
failure of orthogonality. A quasi-orthogonality property is proved using the
fact that the error is orthogonal to the divergence free subspace, while the
part of the error that is not divergence free can be bounded by the data
oscillation using a discrete stability result. This discrete stability result
is also used to get a localized discrete upper bound which is crucial for the
proof of the optimality of the adaptive approximation
