  We study the response of a uniformly accelerated detector modeled by a
two-level atom nonlinearly coupled to vacuum massless Rarita-Schwinger fields.
We first generalize the formalism developed by Dalibard, Dupont-Roc, and
Cohen-Tannoudji in the linear coupling case, and we then calculate the mean
rate of change of the atomic energy of the accelerated atom. Our result shows
that a uniformly accelerated atom in its ground state interacting with vacuum
Rarita-Schwinger field fluctuations would spontaneously transition to an
excited state and the unique feature in contrast to the case of the atom
coupled to the scalar, electromagnetic and Dirac fields is the appearance of
terms in the excitation rate which are proportional to the sixth and eighth
powers of acceleration.
