Abstract
The dual-colour excitation for D1 transition is analysed taking into account the hyperfine structure of sodium atomic vapour. The advancement of the probe and restoring fields are calculated through different time average schemes. The first scheme depends on the arrival time of the pulse. The other one depends explicitly on the arrival time of photons. The evolution of atomic states is described by the Liouville-von Neumann equation for the density matrix of the dressed atom. The spatiotemporal behaviour of radiation fields is described by the reduced Maxwell's field equations. We monitor the populations of atomic levels and calculate the scattered light intensity. The mean arrival time of photons is suitably defined in terms of the scattered light intensity and the total scattered light at a given distance.