On the classification of real forms of non-Abelian Toda theories and W-algebras Original Research Article

We consider conformal non-Abelian Toda theories obtained by Hamiltonian reduction from Wess-Zumino-Witten models based on general real Lie groups. We study in detail the possible choices of reality conditions which can be imposed on the WZW or Toda fields and prove correspondences with sl(2, R) embeddings into real Lie algebras and with the possible real forms of the associated W-algebras. We devise a method for finding all real embeddings which can be obtained from a given embeddings of sl(2, C) into a complex Lie algebra. We then apply this to give a complete classification of real embeddings which are principal in some simple regular subalgebra of a classical Lie algebra.