# Differentiating Scalar along a geodesic

I have been studying GR for sometime and doing exercises from Schutz and I have a question about differentiating along a geodesic. Here is what I know. The equation of geodesic in terms of four momentum is given as,$$p^\alpha p^{\beta}_{;\alpha}$$. Now if I want to differentiate a scalar along the geodesic I figured I have to do this, $$\frac{d\phi}{d\tau}$$ Here, $$\tau$$ is the proper time which is the parameter along the curve. The change of the scalar $$\phi$$ along the curve is equal to, $$\frac{d\phi}{d\tau}=\phi,_{\beta}U^\beta$$ Here, $$U^\beta$$ is the four velocity of the curve. Writing this in covariant derivative form I believe it should just be,$$\frac{d\phi}{d\tau}=\phi_{;\beta}U^\beta$$ So if a scalar (like a dot product between vectors) is constant along the geodesic then I believe it means that,$$\frac{d\phi}{d\tau}=0.$$ Is this correct?

In the question I am trying to solve, the condition is that $$p^\alpha\epsilon_\alpha=\text{constant}$$ along the geodesic. I am trying to write the condition of what this means to proceed with further calculation.

So I ended up trying to solve the problem, assuming what I stated above is correct. I will state the problem here for reference, Show that if a vector field $$\epsilon^\alpha$$ satisfies Killing’s equation then $$p^\alpha\epsilon_\alpha$$ is constant along the geodesic. So I just took covariant derivative of $$\phi$$ as, $$\frac{d\phi}{d\tau}=U^\beta\phi_{;\beta}$$ and then set it to zero. Here I defined $$\phi = p^\alpha \epsilon_\alpha$$. Then basically expanded the covariant derivative of $$\epsilon$$ and got to the point (using the equation of geodesic $$U^\alpha U^\beta_{;\alpha}=0$$) where you get $$U^\alpha U^\beta \epsilon_{\alpha,\beta}$$. Since $$\epsilon^\alpha$$ is known to be Killing vector field then it satisfies the Killing equation $$\epsilon_{\alpha,\beta}=-\epsilon_{\beta,\alpha}$$ which basically makes it anti-symmetric hence the sum $$U^\alpha U^\beta \epsilon_{\alpha,\beta}$$ is zero which proves that, $$\frac{d(p^\alpha\epsilon_\alpha)}{d\tau}=U^\beta(p^\alpha\epsilon_\alpha)_{;\beta}=0$$.