Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 July 2015
We continue the study of collisionless systems governed by additive $r^{-{\it\alpha}}$ interparticle forces by focusing on the influence of the force exponent ${\it\alpha}$ on radial orbital anisotropy. In this preparatory work, we construct the radially anisotropic Osipkov–Merritt phase-space distribution functions for self-consistent spherical Hernquist models with $r^{-{\it\alpha}}$ forces and $1\leqslant {\it\alpha}<3$ . The resulting systems are isotropic at the centre and increasingly dominated by radial orbits at radii larger than the anisotropy radius $r_{a}$ . For radially anisotropic models we determine the minimum value of the anisotropy radius $r_{ac}$ as a function of ${\it\alpha}$ for phase-space consistency (such that the phase-space distribution function is nowhere negative for $r_{a}\geqslant r_{ac}$ ). We find that $r_{ac}$ decreases for decreasing ${\it\alpha}$ , and that the amount of kinetic energy that can be stored in the radial direction relative to that stored in the tangential directions for marginally consistent models increases for decreasing ${\it\alpha}$ . In particular, we find that isotropic systems are consistent in the explored range of ${\it\alpha}$ . By means of direct $N$ -body simulations, we finally verify that the isotropic systems are also stable.