The shear channel spectral function in hot Yang-Mills theory

We determine a next-to-leading order result for the shear channel thermal spectral function in SU(N) Yang-Mills theory, working in the limit of vanishing external three-momentum. The result is subsequently applied to the evaluation of the corresponding imaginary time correlator, and its use in the context of sum rules is discussed. Our hope is that the calculation will eventually find use in the nonperturbative determination of the shear viscosity of the theory.