Assume you have an almost connected simple Lie group G with trivial center. (In particular excluding non-algebraic examples such as the universal cover of SL_2(R).)
Such a group should automatically be an algebraic group over the reals resp. the complex numbers.
Is this true and why?
Can we in addition conclude (EDIT: under a good choice of the field and possibly additional assumptions?) that G is absolutely almost simple as an algebraic group?
EDIT: Asking this I do not want to regard a complex Lie group as a real algebraic group.
