Embeddings of maximal tori in classical groups over local and global fields

Embeddings of maximal tori in classical groups over fields of characteristic not 2 are the subject matter of several recent papers. The aim of the present paper is to give necessary and sufficient conditions for such an embedding to exist, when the base field is a local field, or the field of real numbers. This completes the results of [3], where a complete criterion is given for the Hasse principle to hold when the base field is a global field.