Effective utilization of solar energy resource enables to improve the thermal performance of solar evacuated tube. In present work, the back side of solar vacuum tube was coupled with mini-compound parabolic concentrator (mini-CPC). The thermal characteristics of the presented mini-CPC solar vacuum tube were analyzed theoretically and experimentally. A mathematical model of heat transfer for the mini-CPC vacuum tube was established according to the energy conservation, and solved by iterative calculation based on home-built C programming language. The obtained numerical solutions fit in well with the experimental results. Furthermore, analysis indicates the vacuum interlayer plays a crucial role in hindering heat transfer. The thermal-convection resistance (R-co-air,R-conv) dominates the heat loss from cover tube to ambient rather than thermal-radiation resistance (R-co-sky,R-rad). The measured final temperature increment of working water for the mini-CPC and ordinary evacuated tube can reach 63.4 K and 49.8 K, respectively. An experimental result also reveals that the thermal efficiency of the mini-CPC vacuum tube is increased by 24.3%-29.2% compared with that of vacuum tube without mini-CPC, considering various weather conditions. Consequently, the designed mini-CPC evacuated tube shows a preferable performance, which may provide a certain reference in technology for engineering applications. (c) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.