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New measurements of the neutron scattering double differential cross section of iron were carried out at the neutron time-of-flight facilities GELINA and nELBE. A neutron spectrometer consisting of an array of up to 32 liquid organic scintillators was employed, which was designed to measure the scattering differential cross section at eight scattering angles and to simultaneously determine the integral cross section via numerical quadrature. The separation of elastic from inelastic scattering was achieved by analysing the time-of-flight dependent light-output distributions to determine the scattered neutron energy. The method was validated by studying elastic scattering on carbon and it was proved to work well for the determination of the elastic cross section. Here, the possibility to extend it to inelastic scattering was investigated too. For these experiments a sample of natural iron was used and the results cover the incident neutron energy range from 2 to 6~MeV. Both the differential and the integral elastic cross sections were produced for Fe, while for inelastic scattering, partial angular distributions for scattering from the first excited level of Fe could be determined.

Neutron total cross sections of natFe, 197Au and natW have been measured at the nELBE neutron time-of-flight facility in the energy range from 0.2 - 8 MeV with an uncertainty due to counting statistics of up to 2 % and a total uncertainty due to systematic effects of 1 %. The neutrons are produced with the superconducting electron accelerator ELBE using a liquid lead circuit as photo-neutron target. By periodical sample-in-sample-out measurements the transmission of the sample materials has been determined using a low-threshold plastic scintillation detector. The resulting effective total cross sections show good agreement with previously measured data that cover only part of the energy range available at nELBE. The results have also been compared to evaluated library files and recent calculations based on a dispersive coupled channel optical model potential.

The angular distribution of γ-rays emitted after inelastic scattering of fast neutrons from iron was determined at the nELBE neutron time-of-flight facility. An iron sample of natural isotopic composition was irradiated by a continuous photo-neutron spectrum in the energy range from about 0.1 up to 10 MeV. The de-excitation γ-rays of the four lowest excited states of ⁵⁶Fe and the first excited state of ⁵⁴Fe were detected using a setup of five high-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors and five LaBr₃ scintillation detectors positioned around the sample at 30°, 55°, 90°, 125° and 150° with respect to the incoming neutron beam. The resulting angular distributions were fitted by Legendre polynomials up to 4th order and the angular distribution coefficients a₂ and a₄ were extracted. The angular distribution coefficients of three transitions in ⁵⁶Fe are reported here for the first time. The results are applied to a previous measurement of the inelastic scattering cross section determined using a single HPGe detector positioned at 125°. Using the updated γ-ray angular distribution, the previous cross section results are in good agreement with reference data.