Abstract
We show that the covariant Raychaudhuri identity describing kinematic characteristics of space-time admits a representation involving a geometrical scalar $\ensuremath{\xi}$ which, depending on circumstances, might be related to, e.g., relativistic temperature or cosmological scalar field. With an appropriately chosen spacetime deformation tensor (fixing the symmetry of a problem under consideration), such scalarization opens a wide scope for physical applications. We consider a few such applications including dynamics of cosmological (anti)scalar background, nonvariational deduction of the field equations, scalar and black-hole thermodynamics and the reshaping of the Einstein equations into the Klein-Gordon equation in thermodynamic Killing space.