  In this paper we apply the recently developed mimetic discretization method
to the mixed formulation of the Stokes problem in terms of vorticity, velocity
and pressure. The mimetic discretization presented in this paper and in [50] is
a higher-order method for curvilinear quadrilaterals and hexahedrals.
Fundamental is the underlying structure of oriented geometric objects, the
relation between these objects through the boundary operator and how this
defines the exterior derivative, representing the grad, curl and div, through
the generalized Stokes theorem. The mimetic method presented here uses the
language of differential $k$-forms with $k$-cochains as their discrete
counterpart, and the relations between them in terms of the mimetic operators:
reduction, reconstruction and projection. The reconstruction consists of the
recently developed mimetic spectral interpolation functions. The most important
result of the mimetic framework is the commutation between differentiation at
the continuous level with that on the finite dimensional and discrete level. As
a result operators like gradient, curl and divergence are discretized exactly.
For Stokes flow, this implies a pointwise divergence-free solution. This is
confirmed using a set of test cases on both Cartesian and curvilinear meshes.
It will be shown that the method converges optimally for all admissible
boundary conditions.
