  Closed, singularity-free, inflationary cosmological models have recently been
studied in the context of general relativity. Despite their appeal, these so
called emergent models suffer from a number of limitations. These include the
fact that they rely on an initial Einstein static state to describe the past
eternal phase of the universe. Given the instability of such a state within the
context of general relativity, this amounts to a very severe fine tuning. Also
in order to be able to study the dynamics of the universe within the context of
general relativity, they set the initial conditions for the universe in the
classical phase. Here we study the existence and stability of such models in
the context of Loop Quantum Cosmology and show that both these limitations can
be partially remedied, once semi-classical effects are taken into account. An
important consequence of these effects is to give rise to a static solution
(not present in GR), which dynamically is a centre equilibrium point and
located in the more natural semi-classical regime. This allows the construction
of emergent models in which the universe oscillates indefinitely about such an
initial static state. We construct an explicit emergent model of this type, in
which a non-singular past eternal oscillating universe enters a phase where the
symmetry of the oscillations is broken, leading to an emergent inflationary
epoch, while satisfying all observational and semi-classical constraints. We
also discuss emergent models in which the universe possesses both early- and
late-time accelerating phases.
