Don't get too caught up in the 'tabbar' piece of this. Consider how a simpler app would work: if you select a cell in the RootViewController, how would you notify the DetailViewController?
It won't be automatic. Most likely, you will have a dedicated connection from the RootViewController to the DetailViewController - and you will invoke some method on the DetailViewController from the RootViewController in something like the
- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath;
method in the RootViewController. Indeed, this is how the template UISplitView iPad app is setup. There is an IBOutlet connection from the RootViewController to the DetailViewController.
As long as you manage the memory correctly (retain, release) - there should be no problem if each of your (root) view controllers (in the tab view) have a connection to the single DetailViewController. To keep the tab'd controllers from stepping on each other, you may wish to centralize the logic into a 'middleman' class. Maybe you want to clean something up just before ViewControllerB sorts the details that ViewControllerA just sorted ...
That part is up to you. Just note that there is no backend black magic going on such that a DetailViewController is automatically updated to show something based on a cell selected in any RootViewController.