Covariant Taylor Series

I recently saw for the first time formulas that are covariant versions of Taylor series. Because they are not easy to find on the internet, I write some down here. Suppose $x_0$ and $x_1$ are two points on a manifold, then the covariant Taylor series are formulas like \begin{align*} f(x_1) &= f(x_0) + f_{;\mu}(x_0)\, \eta^{\mu} + \dfrac{1}{2}f_{;\mu\nu}(x_0)\, \eta^{\mu}\eta^{\nu} + O(\eta)^3\\ T_{\mu}(x_1) &= T_{\mu}(x_0) + T_{\mu;\alpha}(x_0)\, \eta^{\alpha} + \dfrac{1}{2}\left( T_{\mu;\alpha\beta}(x_0)+\dfrac{1}{3} R^{\sigma}_{\ \ \alpha\beta\mu}(x_0)\, T_{\sigma}(x_0)\right) \eta^{\alpha}\eta^{\beta} + O(\eta)^3 \end{align*} The semi-colon denotes the covariant derivative with the Levi-Civita connection. The vector $\eta^{\mu}$ is defined as follows: take a geodesic $\gamma(t)$ such that $\gamma(0) = x_0$ and $\gamma(1) = x_1$, then $\eta^{\mu} = \dot\gamma^{\mu}(0)$. The higher coefficients in the series expansion become more and more complicated formulas involving the Riemann tensor and its covariant derivatives. The formulas can be proved using normal coordinates.

More information can be found in "The Background Field Method and the Ultraviolet Structure of the Supersymmetric Nonlinear Sigma Model", by Alvarez-Gaume, Freedman, Mukhi, 1981

A calculation on moduli stabilization

In section 21.6 "Moduli stabilization and the landscape" in Zwiebach's string theory book, I read the sentence "Deriving the potential $V(R)$ associated with $R$ is a straightforward but technical calculation in general relativity". At this point I did not understand what the calculation was. I vaguely remembered a paper by Witten about instabilities in Kaluza-Klein spacetimes related to instantons. A calculation with instantons is indeed technical, but perhaps straightforward for experts. I found more information in a paper by Denef [1]. The calculation has nothing to do with instantons, but is indeed a straightforward calculation in differential geometry. In the rest of this blog post I set out the calculation in the form of a new exercise for Zwiebach's book.