Effective potential and warp factor dynamics

We define an effective potential describing all massless and massive modes in the supergravity limit of string/M theory compactification which is valid off-shell, i.e. without imposing the equations of motion. If we neglect the warp factor, it is unbounded below, as is the case for the action in Euclidean quantum gravity. By study of the constraint which determines the warp factor, we solve this problem, obtaining a physically satisfying and tractable description of the dynamics of the warp factor.