  Numerical computations of stationary states of fast-rotating Bose-Einstein
condensates require high spatial resolution due to the presence of a large
number of quantized vortices. In this paper we propose a low-order finite
element method with mesh adaptivity by metric control, as an alternative
approach to the commonly used high order (finite difference or spectral)
approximation methods. The mesh adaptivity is used with two different numerical
algorithms to compute stationary vortex states: an imaginary time propagation
method and a Sobolev gradient descent method. We first address the basic issue
of the choice of the variable used to compute new metrics for the mesh
adaptivity and show that simultaneously refinement using the real and imaginary
part of the solution is successful. Mesh refinement using only the modulus of
the solution as adaptivity variable fails for complicated test cases. Then we
suggest an optimized algorithm for adapting the mesh during the evolution of
the solution towards the equilibrium state. Considerable computational time
saving is obtained compared to uniform mesh computations. The new method is
applied to compute difficult cases relevant for physical experiments (large
nonlinear interaction constant and high rotation rates).
