Implicant

In Boolean logic, an implicant is a "covering" (sum term or product term) of one or more minterms in a sum of products (or maxterms in a product of sums) of a boolean function. Formally, a product term P in a sum of products is an implicant of the Boolean function F if P implies F. More precisely:

P implies F (and thus is an implicant of F) if F also takes the value 1 whenever P equals 1.

where

• F is a Boolean function of n variables.
• P is a product term.

This means that PF with respect to the natural ordering of the Boolean space. For instance, the function

is implied by, by, by, by and many others; these are the implicants of .