a high-power yb/ce co-doped double-clad fiber with low optical loss was successfully fabricated by an optimized chelate gas phase deposition technique. it exhibits a nearly homogenous distribution of al, ce and yb ions in the fiber core region, which reduce the clustering. the core attenuation at 1080 nm and 1383 nm are 12 db/km and 46 db/km, respectively, indicating high optical performance with a low optical loss. the amplifier stage with this fiber delivers 4.62 kw excellent beam quality (m-2 = 1.67) laser output with a slope efficiency of 80.3%. the experimental results show that the chelate gas phase deposition technique is a prospective method to fabricate a yb/ce co-doped fiber with low optical loss, which is beneficial for acquiring multi-kilowatt continuous-wave fiber laser with excellent beam quality. (c) 2017 optical society of america