4f orbitals are actually included but empty in POTCAR and will appear in due place. For example, if you calculate LaF3, 4f (and 5d), you will see pDOS of 4f (and 5d) high up in the conduction band.

Hi Poonam Sharma

To understand more details of what configuration does POTCAR have, check the line no. 26 (most probably) of La and La_s in PBE pseudopotentials, you can see the headline

Atomic configuration

14 entries

n l j E occ.

and then you will have different orbitals with their occupancies, so as Chang-Kui Duan mentioned, 4f is included in it, you can see in the last line of this block that 4f has occupancy zero, which means it is empty, so it will be considered in the conduction bands.

These different POTCAR files have a different number of valence electrons, others will be considered in CORE, accordingly, the order of energies in this block is given. whatever you need for your system, you need to choose accordingly.

Hope it helps!

Best wishes,

Payal