At the leading order, M-theory admits minimal supersymmetric compactifications if the internal manifold has exceptional holonomy. The inclusion of non-vanishing fluxes in M-theory and string theory compactifications induce a superpotential in the lower dimensional theory, which depends on the fluxes. In this work, we check the conjectured form of this superpotential in the case of warped M-theory compactifications on Spin(7) holonomy manifolds. We perform a Kaluza-Klein reduction of the eleven-dimensional supersymmetry transformation for the gravitino and we find by direct comparison the superpotential expression. We check the conjecture for the heterotic string compactified on a Calabi-Yau three-fold as well. The conjecture can be checked indirectly by inspecting the scalar potential obtained after the compactification of M-theory on Spin(7) holonomy manifolds with non-vanishing fluxes. The scalar potential can be written in terms of the superpotential and we show that this potential stabilizes all the moduli fields describing deformations of the metric except for the radial modulus.

All the above analyses require the knowledge of the minimal supergravity action in three dimensions. Therefore we calculate the most general causal N=1 three-dimensional, gauge invariant action coupled to matter in superspace and derive its component form using Ectoplasmic integration theory. We also show that the three-dimensional theory which results from the compactification is in agreement with the more general supergravity construction.

The compactification procedure takes into account higher order quantum correction terms in the low energy effective action. We analyze the properties of these terms on a Spin(7) background. We derive a perturbative set of solutions which emerges from a warped compactification on a Spin(7) holonomy manifold with non-vanishing flux for the M-theory field strength and we show that in general the Ricci flatness of the internal manifold is lost, which means that the supergravity vacua are deformed away from the exceptional holonomy. Using the superpotential form we identify the supersymmetric vacua out of this general set of solutions.