Supersymmetry and Vacuum Energy in Five-Dimensional Brane Worlds

We present the explicit form of the four-dimensional effective supergravity action which describes low-energy physics of the Randall--Sundrum model with moduli fields in the bulk and charged chiral matter living on the branes. The low-energy action is derived from the compactification of a locally supersymmetric model in five dimension. We describe the mechanism of supersymmetry breaking mediation which relies on the non-trivial configuration of the $Z_2$-odd bulk fields. Broken supersymmetry leads to stabilization of the interbrane distance.