Logic gates are the basic building blocks of digital systems. They have one or more inputs and a single output, and their output is determined by the logic relationship between their inputs. Common logic gates include AND, OR, NOT, XOR, NAND, NOR, and XNOR gates, which output a 1 or 0 depending on whether the inputs are both 1, either 1, inverted, different, both 1 for NAND and NOR, or the same for XNOR.