A simple high-brightness TEM00 mode solar laser design with a grooved Nd:YAG rod pumped through a heliostat parabolic mirror system is proposed here. A fused silica semi-cylindrical lens was combined with a 2V-shaped pumping cavity to provide efficient side-pumping along the grooved 1.0 at.% Nd:YAG rod. Optimum pumping and laser beam parameters were found through ZEMAX and LASCAD numerical analysis. The proposed scheme offered a circularly symmetric and uniform absorption profile. Maximum TEM00 mode solar laser power of 25.5 W was numerically achieved with a 3.5 mm diameter grooved rod, corresponding to 8.5 W/m(2) collection efficiency. 17.1 W laser beam brightness figure of merit was attained, being 4.3 times more than the previous record with TEM00 mode Nd:YAG solar laser, and 10,000 times higher than last year's result with a large grooved Nd:YAG rod. To validate the proposed pumping scheme, a solar laser prototype was built and firstly tested with a small-scale heliostat parabolic mirror system of Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, producing 4.0 W continuous-wave TEM00 mode solar laser power at 3.6 W/m(2) collection efficiency and 3.0 W laser beam figure of merit. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.